Another undertaking then occupied Muhammed Girai: in 1523 he joined the

Nogaians and conquered Astrakhan. There the Nogaians quarreled with him

and killed him; his place was taken by Saidat Girai, who sent the grand

prince the following conditions for an alliance: To give him 60,000

altines (an ancient coin of the value of three kopecks) and to make peace

with Sahib Girai; but Vasili seeing the devastation of the Crimea both by

the Nogaians and the Cossacks of Dashkevitch, who had hitherto acted in

concert with the Crimeans, rejected these proposals. To avenge himself on

Sahib Girai, who had massacred the Russians in Kazan where blood flowed

like water, Vasili himself came to the land of Kazan (1523), devastated

it, and made the inhabitants prisoners; on his return he built the town

of Vasilsursk. When in 1524 a great army was sent from Moscow to Kazan,

Sahib Girai fled to the Crimea, and the inhabitants of Kazan proclaimed

his young nephew Sava Girai as czar; the expedition from Moscow was

however unsuccessful, although the people of Kazan, who had lost their

artillery engineer, sued for peace.

THE GROWING POWER OF RUSSIA

Their dependence upon the grand prince was irksome to the inhabitants of

Kazan; fresh disputes arose, Vasili brought on an intrigue, and Kazan

soon asked for a new czar. Vasili named Shig Alei, who was at that time

in Nijni, but when the people of Kazan entreated that his brother Jan

Alei (Enalei), who then ruled over Kassimov, should be nominated in his

stead, Vasili consented. Jan Alei was established at Kazan and Shig

Alei was given Koshira, but as he did not keep the peace, and entered

on negotiations with Kazan, he was exiled to Belozero. Disturbances

took place in the Crimea; Saidat Girai was overthrown by Sahib, but the

relations between the Crimea and Moscow remained the same; the Tatars

continued to make insignificant raids and obtained presents. Nevertheless

the Tatar messengers began to be less respectfully treated at Moscow:

“Our messengers”--wrote Sahib Girai--“complain that thou dost not honour

them as of old, and yet it is thy duty to honour them; whoever wishes

to pay respect to the master, throws a bone to his dog.” Of other

diplomatic relations those with Sweden and Denmark bore the character

of frontier disputes; the intercourse with the pope was entered upon

through the desire of the latter to convert Russia to Catholicism and

incite her to war against Turkey. The intercourse with the latter power

had no particular results. It is curious to observe that at this period

relations were entered into with India; the sultan Babur sent ambassadors

(1533) with proposals of mutual commercial dealings.[b]

[Sidenote: [1533 A.D.]]

Each day added to the importance of Russia in Europe. Vasili exchanged

ambassadors with the eastern courts and wrote to Francis I the great

king of the Gauls. He numbered among his correspondents Leo X, Clement

VII, Maximilian, and Charles V; Gustavus Vasa, founder of a new dynasty;

Sultan Selim, conqueror of Egypt and Soliman the Magnificent. The grand

mogul of the Indes, Babur, descendant of Timur, sought his friendship.

The autocracy affirmed itself each day more vigorously. Vasili governed

without consulting his council of boyars. “_Moltchi, smerd!_” (Hold,

clown!) said he to one of the nobles who dared to raise an objection.

This growing power manifested itself in the splendour of the court, the

receptions of the ambassadors displaying a luxury hitherto unprecedented.

Strangers, though not in large numbers, continued to come to Moscow,

of whom the most illustrious was a monk from Mount Athos, Maxine the

Greek.[e]

MAXINE THE GREEK

In the early days of his reign, when Vasili was examining the treasures

left to him by his father, he perceived a large number of Greek church

books which had been partly collected by former grand princes and partly

brought to Moscow by Sophia, and which now lay covered with dust in utter

neglect. The young sovereign manifested the desire of having a person

who would be capable of looking them over and of translating the best of

them into the Slavonic language. Such a person was not to be found in

Moscow, and letters were written to Constantinople. The patriarch, being

desirous of pleasing the grand prince, made search for such a philosopher

in Bulgaria, in Macedonia and in Thessalonica; but the Ottoman yoke

had there crushed all the remains of ancient learning and darkness and

ignorance reigned in the sultan’s realms. Finally it was discovered that

in the famous convent of the Annunciation on Mount Athos there were two

monks, Sabba and Maxine, who were learned theologians and well versed in

the Slavonic and Greek languages. The former on account of his great age

was unable to undertake so long a journey, but the latter consented to

the desire of the patriarch and of the grand prince.

It would indeed have been impossible to find a person better fitted for

the projected work. Born in Greece, but educated in the enlightened

west, Maxine had studied in Paris and Florence, had travelled much,

was acquainted with various languages, and was possessed of unusual

erudition, which he had acquired in the best universities and in

conversation with men of enlightenment. Vasili received him with marked

favour. When he saw the library, Maxine, in a transport of enthusiasm

and astonishment, exclaimed: “Sire! all Greece does not now possess

such treasures, neither does Italy, where Latin fanaticism has reduced

to ashes many of the works of our theologians which my compatriots had

saved from the Mohammedan barbarians.” The grand prince listened to him

with the liveliest pleasure and confided the library to his care. The

zealous Greek made a catalogue of the books which had been until then

unknown to the Slavonic people. By desire of the sovereign, and with the

assistance of three Muscovites, Vasili, Dmitri and Michael Medovartzov,

he translated the commentary of the psalter. Approved by the Metropolitan

Varlaam and all the ecclesiastical council, this important work made

Maxine famous, and so endeared him to the grand prince that he could

not part with him, and daily conversed with him on matters of religion.

The wise Greek was not, however, dazzled by these honours, and though

grateful to Vasili, he earnestly implored him to allow him to return to

the quiet of his retreat at Mount Athos: “There,” said he, “will I praise

your name and tell my compatriots that in the world there still exists a

Christian czar, mighty and great, who, if it pleases the Most High, may

yet deliver us from the tyranny of the infidel.” But Vasili only replied

by fresh signs of favour and kept him nine years in Moscow; this time was

spent by Maxine in the translation of various works, in correcting errors

in the ancient translations, and in composing works of piety of which

more than a hundred are known to us.

Having free access to the grand prince, he sometimes interceded for the

noblemen who had fallen in disgrace and regained for them the sovereign’s

favour. This excited the dissatisfaction and envy of many persons, in

particular of the clergy and of the worldly-minded monks of St. Joseph,

who enjoyed the favour of Vasili. The humble-minded metropolitan Varlaam

had cared little for earthly matters, but his successor, the proud

Daniel, soon declared himself the enemy of the foreigner. It began to be

asked: “Who is this man who dares to deface our sacred church books and

restore to favour the disgraced boyars?” Some tried to prove that he was

a heretic, others represented him to the grand prince as an ungrateful

calumniator who censured the acts of the sovereign behind his back. It

was at this time that Vasili was divorced from the unfortunate Solomonia,

and it is said that this pious ecclesiastic did really disapprove of

it; however we find amongst his works a discourse against those who

repudiate their wives without lawful cause. Always disposed to take

the part of the oppressed, he secretly received them in his cell and

sometimes heard injurious speeches directed against the sovereign and the

metropolitan. Thus the unfortunate boyar Ivan Beklemishef complained to

him of the irascibility of Vasili, and said that formerly the venerable

pastors of the church had restrained the sovereigns from indulging their

passions and committing injustice, whereas now Moscow no longer had a

metropolitan, for Daniel only bore the name and the mask of a pastor,

without thinking that he ought to be the guide of consciences and the

protector of the innocent; he also said that Maxine would never be

allowed to leave Russia, because the grand prince and the metropolitan

feared his indiscretions in other countries, where he might publish

the tale of their faults and weaknesses. At last Maxine’s enemies so

irritated the grand prince against him, that he ordered him to be brought

to judgment and Maxine was condemned to be confined in one of the

monasteries of Iver, having been found guilty of falsely interpreting the

Holy Scriptures and the dogmas of the church. According to the opinion

of some contemporaries the charge was a calumny invented by Jonas,

archimandrite of the Tchudov monastery, Vassian, bishop of Kolomna, and

the metropolitan.[f]

PRIVATE LIFE OF VASILI IVANOVITCH; HIS DEATH

There is one event in the private life of Vasili Ivanovitch which has

great importance on the subsequent course of history, and throws a

clearer light on the relations of men and parties at this epoch. This

event is his divorce and second marriage. Vasili Ivanovitch had first

contracted a marriage in the year of his father’s death with Solomonia

Sabourov; but they had no children and Solomonia vainly resorted to

sorcery in order to have children and keep the love of her husband. The

grand prince no longer loved her and decided to divorce her. He consulted

his boyars, laying stress on the fact that he had no heir and that his

brothers did not understand how to govern their own appanages; it is said

that the boyars replied “The unfruitful fig-tree is cut down and cast out

of the vineyard.” The sovereign then turned with the same question to the

spiritual powers: the metropolitan Daniel gave his entire consent, but

the monk Vassian, known in the world as Prince Vasili Patrikëiev, who,

together with his father, had been forced to become a monk during the

reign of Ivan because he belonged to the party of Helen, but who was now

greatly esteemed by Vasili, was against the divorce and was therefore

banished from the monastery of Simon to that of Joseph. Maxine the Greek

and Prince Simon Kurbski were also against the divorce, and suffered

for their opinion; and the boyar Beklemishev, who was on friendly terms

with Maxine, was executed. Solomonia was made to take the veil at the

convent of Suzdal and Vasili married Helen Vasilievna Glinski, the

niece of Michael Glinski who had been liberated from prison (1526).

From this marriage Vasili had two sons; Ivan (born 1530) and Iuri (born

1533). Vasili’s love for his second wife was so great that according to

Herberstein he had his beard cut off to please her. Towards the end of

1533 Vasili fell ill and died on December 3rd, leaving as his heir his

infant son Ivan.[b]

A FORECAST OF THE REIGN OF IVAN (IV) THE TERRIBLE

The rôle and the character of Ivan IV have been and still are very

differently appreciated by Russian historians. Karamzin, who has never

submitted his accounts and his documents to a sufficiently severe

critic, sees in him a prince who, naturally vicious and cruel, gave,

under restriction to two virtuous ministers, a few years of tranquillity

to Russia; and who subsequently, abandoning himself to the fury of his

passions, appalled Europe as well as the empire with what the historian

designates “seven epochs of massacres.” Kostomarov re-echoes the opinions

of Karamzin.

Another school, represented by Soloviev and Zabielin, has manifested a

greater defiance towards the prejudiced statements of Kurbski, chief

of the oligarchical party; towards Guagnini, a courtier of the king of

Poland; towards Tanbe and Kruse, traitors to the sovereign who had taken

them into his service. Above all, they have taken into account the times

and the society in whose midst Ivan the Terrible lived. They concern

themselves less with his morals as an individual than with his rôle as

instrument of the historical development of Russia. Did not the French

historians during long years misinterpret the enormous services rendered

by Louis XI in the great work of the unification of France and of the

creation of the modern state? His justification was at length achieved

after a more minute examination into documents and circumstances.

At the time when Ivan succeeded his father the struggle of the central

power against the forces of the past had changed character. The old

Russian states, which had held so long in check the new power of Moscow;

the principalities of Tver, Riazan, Suzdal, Novgorod-Seversk; the

republics of Novgorod, Pskov, Viatka had lost their independence. Their

possessions had served to aggrandise those of Moscow. All northern and

eastern Russia was thus united under the sceptre of the grand prince. To

the ceaseless struggles constantly breaking out against Tver, Riazan,

Novgorod, was to succeed the great foreign strife--the holy war against

Lithuania, the Tatars, the Swedes.

Precisely because the work of the unification of Great Russia was

accomplished, the resistance in the interior against the prince’s

authority was to become more active. The descendants of reigning families

dispossessed by force of bribery or arms, the servitors of those old

royal houses, had entered the service of the masters of Moscow. His

court was composed of crownless princes--the Chouiski, the Kurbski, the

Vorotinski; descendants of ancient appanaged princes, proud of the blood

of Rurik which coursed through their veins. Others were descended from

the Lithuanian Gedimine, or from the baptised Tatar _Monzas_.

All these princes, as well as the powerful boyars of Tver, Riazan,

Novgorod, were become the boyars of the grand prince. There was for all

only one court at which they could serve--that of Moscow. When Russia had

been divided into sovereign states, the discontented boyars had been at

liberty to change masters--to pass from the service of Tchernigov into

that of Kiev, from that of Suzdal into that of Novgorod. Now, whither

could they go? Outside of Moscow, there were only foreign rulers, enemies

of Russia. To make use of the ancient right to change masters was to

go over to the enemy--it was treason. “To change” and “to betray” were

become synonymous: the Russian word _izmiyanit_ (third person singular of

“to change”) was become the word _izmiyanik_ (“traitor”).

The Russian boyar could take refuge neither with the Germans, the Swedes,

nor the Tatars; he could go only to the sovereign of Lithuania--but this

was the worst possible species of change, the most pernicious form of

treason. The prince of Moscow knew well that the war with Lithuania--that

state which Polish in the west, by its Russian provinces, in the east

exercised a dangerous attraction over subjects of Moscow--was a struggle

for existence. Lithuania was not only a foreign enemy--it was a domestic

enemy, with intercourse and sympathies in the very heart of the Russian

state, even in the palace of the czar; her formidable hand was felt in

all intrigues, in all conspiracies. The foreign war against Lithuania,

the domestic war against the Russian oligarchy are but two different

phases of the same war--the heaviest and most perilous of all those

undertaken by the grand prince of Moscow. The dispossessed princes, the

boyars of the old independent states had given up the struggle against

him on the field of battle; they continued to struggle against him in his

own court.

It was no longer war between state and state; it was intestine

strife--that of the oligarchy against autocratic power. Resigned to the

loss of their sovereignty, the new prince-boyars of Moscow were not

yet resigned to their position as mere subjects. The struggle was thus

limited to a narrower field, and was therefore the more desperate. The

court at Moscow was a tilt-yard, whence none could emerge without a

change of masters--the Lithuanian for the Muscovite--without treason:

hence the furious nature of the war of two principles under Ivan IV.[e]

THE MINORITY OF IVAN IV

On the death of his father, Ivan was only three years of age. Helena,

his mother, a woman unfit for the toils of government, impure in her

conduct, and without judgment, assumed the office of regent, which she

shared with a paramour, whose elevation to such a height caused universal

disgust, particularly among the princes of the blood and the nobility.

The measures which had of late years been adopted towards the boyars were

not forgotten by that haughty class; and now that the infirm state of the

throne gave them a fair pretext for complaint, they conspired against the

regent, partly with a view to remove so unpopular and degraded a person

from the imperial seat, but principally that they might take advantage

of the minority of the czar, and seize upon the empire for their own

ends. The circumstances in which the death of Vasili left the country

were favourable to these designs. The licentiousness that prevailed at

court, the absence of a strict and responsible head, and the confusion

that generally took the place of the order that had previously prevailed,

assisted the treacherous nobles in their treasonable projects. They had

long panted for revenge and restitution, and the time seemed to be ripe

for the execution of their plans.

[Illustration: IVAN THE TERRIBLE

(1530-1584)]

Amongst the most prominent members of this patrician league, were the

three paternal uncles of the young prince. They made no scruple of

exhibiting their feelings; and they at last grew so clamorous, that the

regent, on the ground that they entertained designs upon the throne,

condemned them to loathsome dungeons, where they died in lingering

torments. Their followers and abettors suffered by torture and the worst

kinds of ignominious punishment. These examples spread such consternation

amongst the rest of the conspirators, that they fled to Lithuania and

the Crimea, where they endeavoured to inspire a sympathy in their

misfortunes. But the regent, whose time appears to have been solely

dedicated to the worst description of pleasures, being unable to preserve

herself without despotism, succeeded in overcoming the enemies whom her

own conduct was so mainly instrumental in creating.

The reign of lascivious folly and wanton rigour was not, however,

destined to survive the wrath of the nobles. For five years, intestine

jealousies and thickening plots plunged the country into anarchy; and, at

last, the regent died suddenly, having, it is believed, fallen by poison

administered through the agency of the revengeful boyars. The spectacle

of one criminal executing summary justice upon another, is not destitute

of some moral utility; and in this case it might have had its beneficial

influence, were it not that the principal conspirators had no sooner

taken off the regent than they violently seized upon the guardianship of

the throne.

The foremost persons in this drama were the Shuiski--a family that had

long been treated with suspicion by the czars, their insolent bearing

having always exposed them to distrust. Prince Shuiski was appointed

president of the council of the boyars, to whom the administration of

affairs was confided, and although his malignant purposes were kept in

check by the crowd of equally ambitious persons that surrounded him, he

possessed sufficient opportunities to consummate a variety of wrongs

upon the resources of the state and upon obnoxious individuals--thus

revenging himself indiscriminately for the ancient injuries his race had

suffered. During this iniquitous rule, which exhibited the extraordinary

features of a government composed of persons with different interests,

pressing forward to the same end, and making a common prey of the trust

that was reposed in their hands, Russia was despoiled in every quarter.

The Tatars, freed for a season from the watchful vigilance of the throne,

roamed at large through the provinces, pillaging and slaying wherever

they went; and this enormous guilt was crowned by the rapacious exactions

and sanguinary proscriptions of the council. The young Ivan was subjected

to the most brutal insults: his education was designedly neglected; he

was kept in total ignorance of public affairs, that he might be rendered

unqualified to assume the hereditary power; and Prince Shuiski, in the

midst of these base intrigues against the future czar, was often seen

to treat him in a contemptuous and degrading manner, on one occasion he

stretched forth his legs, and pressed the weight of his feet on the body

of the boy. Perhaps these unexampled provocations, and the privations

to which he was condemned, produced the germs of a character which was

afterwards developed in such terrible magnificence, the fiend that lived

in the heart of Ivan might not have been born with him; it was probably

generated by the cruelties and wrongs that were practised on his youth.

In vain the Belski, moderate and wise, and the primate, influenced by

the purest motives, remonstrated against the ruinous proceedings of the

council. The voice of admonition was lost in the hideous orgies of the

boyars, until a sudden invasion by the Tatars awakened them to a sense of

their peril. They rallied, order was restored, and Russia was preserved.

But the danger was no sooner over than the Shuiski returned in all their

former strength, seized upon Moscow in the dead of the night, penetrated

to the couch of Ivan, and, dragging him out of his sleep, endeavoured to

destroy his intellect by filling him with sudden terror. The primate,

whose mild representations had displeased them, was ill-treated and

deposed: and the prince Belski, who could not be prevailed upon to link

his fortunes with their desperate courses, was murdered in the height of

their frenzy. Even those members of their own body who, touched by some

intermittent pity, ventured to expostulate, were beaten in the chamber of

their deliberations, and cast out from amongst them.

Under such unpropitious auspices as these, the young Ivan, the inheritor

of a consolidated empire, grew up to manhood. His disposition, naturally

fierce, headstrong, and vindictive, was most insidiously cultivated

into ferocity by the artful counsellors that surrounded him. His

earliest amusements were the torture of wild animals, the ignoble feat

of riding over old men and women, flinging stones from ambuscades

upon the passers-by, and precipitating dogs and cats from the summit

of his palace. Such entertainments as these, the sport of boyhood,

gave unfortunately too correct a prognostic of the fatal career that

lay before him. By a curious retribution, the first exercise of this

terrible temper in its application to humanity fell upon the Shuiski,

who certainly, of all mankind, best merited its infliction. When Ivan

was in his thirteenth year, he accompanied a hunting party at which

Prince Gluiski--another factious lord--and the president of the council

were present. Gluiski, himself a violent and remorseless man, envied

the ascendency of Shuiski, and prompted the young prince to address him

in words of great heat and insult. Shuiski, astonished at the youth’s

boldness, replied in anger. This was sufficient provocation. Ivan gave

way to his rage, and, on a concerted signal, Shuiski was dragged out into

the public streets, and worried alive by dogs in the open daylight. The

wretch expiated a life of guilt by the most horrible agonies.

Thus freed from one tyranny, Ivan was destined for another, which,

however, accepted him as its nominal head, urging him onward to acts of

blood which were but too congenial to his taste. The Gluiski having got

rid of their formidable competitor in the race of crime, now assumed the

direction of affairs. Under their administration, the prince was led to

the commission of the most extravagant atrocities; and the doctrine was

inculcated upon his mind, that the only way to assert authority was by

manifesting the extremity of its wrath. He was taught to believe that

power consisted in oppression. They applauded each fresh instance of

vengeance; and initiated him into a short method of relieving himself

from every person who troubled or offended him, by sacrificing the victim

on the spot.

IVAN ASSUMES THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT

This terrible system continued for three years. The pupilage of the

prince was an uninterrupted scene of horror; and he was crowned czar of

all the Russias in his eighteenth year, after a minority of blood. The

citizens, unsafe and trembling under a despotism which was so capricious

in its enormities, were at length driven to desperation. They fired

the city in several places one night, and Ivan awoke the next morning

amidst flame and smoke, the tossing of brands, and the imprecations of

the multitude. He had been accustomed to terrors, but this conflagration

smote him to the heart. In the midst of the confusion, Sylvester, a monk

belonging to that roving order of persons who then wandered through the

country affecting to be inspired with a divine mission, suddenly appeared

in the presence of the affrighted despot. With a Gospel in one hand,

while the other was raised in an attitude of prophecy, he pointed to the

ruins that surrounded him, and invoking the attention of the prince to

the consequences of his infatuation, he dwelt upon certain appearances

from heaven which prognosticated evil to the dynasty if these courses

were not abandoned; and, working powerfully upon a mind already agonised

with fear, he finally succeeded in gaining a complete ascendency over

the czar. The effect was sudden and extraordinary. The virtuous Alexis

Adaschev aided Sylvester in his efforts to reclaim Ivan; and these,

assisted by the gentle persuasions of the beautiful Anastasia, Ivan’s

young consort whom he had but recently married, appeared to produce a

strong impression upon his feelings.

The result was an entire change in the system of government. Able and

upright men displaced the corrupt and audacious counsellors who had

hitherto filled the empire with alarm; a new organisation of the army

took place; a just assessment of the fiefs, the various services, and

contingents, was established; proprietors of estates were obliged to

contribute to the maintenance of the military strength according to

their means; and by a bonus in the pay of the soldiery, which was now

adopted, the available force of the country was raised to the number of

three hundred thousand men. Thus strengthened, with prudent ministers

and a powerful army, Ivan set himself to the worthy task of subduing

the rebellious Tatars. His ardour even appears to have carried him into

extremes, for in the depth of winter he marched at the head of the

soldiery to the siege of Kazan, although his followers did not hesitate

to declare that no good commander would think of conducting his troops in

so rigorous a season into the quarters of the enemy. But such ebullitions

of discontent were punished with so much severity, that the troops soon

learned to be content with the severities which procured such victories

as Ivan was fortunate enough to gain. The first measure of great utility

which he accomplished, was the erection of forts on the frontier to

repel the aggressions of the enemy; but apprehending that even these

were not sufficient to deter the marauders, he advanced upon Kazan,

and captured it by springing a mine--a process in the art of war which

was quite novel to the Russians, and filled them with astonishment and

admiration. Having taken the city, he turned the mosques of the Tatars

into Christian temples, and caused the khan to be baptised; which proofs

of his religious zeal were admirably calculated to ingratiate him in the

regards of the people.

In one of those ecstatic moods which sometimes assail the better judgment

of the old chroniclers, the Russian historian informs us that Ivan, upon

entering Kazan, wept at the sight of the dead bodies with which the

streets were strewn. We certainly cannot put in any evidence in disproof

of this apocryphal assertion, but the picture of Nero fiddling while Rome

was burning is even more probable.

In addition to his successes at Kazan, Ivan was triumphant in the kingdom

of Astrakhan, which he afterwards annexed to the Russian empire. This

acquisition was very valuable, as in that district the vine, and other

rich productions of the soil, grew in remarkable luxuriance. Fortune

seemed on all hands to favour the interval of grace that visited the

czar. While he was pursuing his course of victory in other places, eighty

thousand Turks, who had been despatched by Selim II against Astrakhan,

perished in the desolate steppes by which it was surrounded. The wars

were thus terminated in glorious and important achievements, which laid

the foundations of that expanded commerce which afterwards rendered

illustrious the era of one of the greatest monarchs the world ever

produced.

THE DISCOVERY OF SIBERIA

But the most important event which distinguished this period of the

reign of Ivan was the discovery of Siberia, an empire of extraordinary

magnitude, producing the richest furs, and studded with inexhaustible

mines of salt, copper and silver. The discovery was accidental, and

caused at first so slight a degree of attention, that it was suffered

to be forgotten until another accident, some years afterwards, recalled

it to the consideration of the government. A body of men, who had been

sent across the mountains of Ingermanland by the czar, penetrated as

far as the banks of the Oley; but the discoveries they reported were

either so imperfect, or so ill-described, that they were passed over in

silence. It subsequently occurred, however, that a merchant of the name

of Strogonov, who was the proprietor of some salt mines on the confines

of Siberia, had his curiosity stimulated by several persons who traded

with him, and whose strange costume and foreign manners excited in him

a desire to become acquainted with the interior of the country from

whence they came. Accordingly he commissioned a few of his people to

return with them into Siberia, and to collect such information respecting

it as their opportunities might enable them to acquire. These people,

having explored the unknown districts, which they found to be inhabited

by a race of Tatars, who possessed a capital called Sibir, returned to

their employer charged with a history of wonders, and a quantity of

costly furs, which promised to open a new source of gain to the diligent

merchant. Strogonov, however, resolved not to keep the knowledge he had

thus attained exclusively to himself, and immediately communicated all he

knew to the court. In the mean time, Iermak, a Don Cossack adventurer,

who, at the head of a gang of those lawless robbers, infested the roads,

plundering the inhabitants and travellers in that part of Russia,

happened to come, accidentally, to the merchant’s dwelling, on his flight

from some Russian troops that had been sent in search of him. While

he remained there, he learned by chance, from Strogonov, of the newly

discovered land; and he and his band, being persons who had nothing to

lose, and who subsisted solely by desperate predatory practices, resolved

to enter the strange country, and seek in its unknown retreats a source

of safety and support. The resistance this adventurer experienced from

the Siberians greatly thinned the ranks of his daring troops, but the

forlorn character of the expedition inspired them with reckless valour;

and, after many exhausting conflicts, they finally overran the country,

and made themselves master of the capital. Iermak now bethought him

of what he should do with his perilous conquest; and seeing that he

possessed no means of accumulating sovereign power, or even of possessing

by tribute, or otherwise, so vast a territory, he threw himself at the

feet of the czar, tendered to him the territory he had won, and solicited

in return a full pardon for all the delinquencies he and his followers

had committed. Ivan readily granted the pardon, and took possession of

his new acquisition. The work of annexation went rapidly forward. Several

commodious towns were built, strong forts were constructed, the mines

were garrisoned, and that great expanse of desert and mountains, which

was afterwards destined to become the convict settlement of Russia, was

formally and permanently consolidated in the dominions of the autocrat.

THE RESTRAINING INFLUENCE OF ANASTASIA

The civil and social improvement of the empire kept pace with the armed

progress. A number of celebrated artists were engaged from the dominions,

and by the permission, of Charles V; the art of letterpress printing was

introduced, and the first type that ever was seen in Russia was imported

by Ivan; the northern parts were opened to a new mercantile intercourse;

and Archangel was established. The laws were revised; and the fees of the

governors of the provinces who administered justice, paying themselves

by pecuniary mulcts on the suitors, were abolished, and in their place

gratuitous justice was administered, and a general assessment levied,

which was collected by officers appointed by government. The grasping

demands of the clergy were restrained, their revenues placed upon a

more equitable basis, and their morals improved by mild but decisive

restrictions.

Such were the fruits of the influence of Anastasia, which procured a

hearing for the wisdom of Alexis and Sylvester. While that amiable and

enlightened lady lived, Ivan pursued a course of just and wise measures

that reflected honour upon his name, and conferred extensive benefits

upon his country. But the latent nature was not extinguished: it only

slept, hushed into slumber by the sweet influences before which his

savage dispositions were subdued. An old bishop, who had formerly been

banished from the court on account of his crimes, and who was one day

consulted by Ivan, replied to the czar in some memorable words which

were ever afterwards cherished in his memory, and were not without their

power over his subsequent life. “If you wish,” exclaimed the bishop,

“to be truly a sovereign, never seek a counsellor wiser than yourself;

never receive advice from any man. Command, but never obey; and you

will be a terror to the boyars. Remember that he who is permitted to

begin advising, is certain to end by ruling, his sovereign.” Ivan,

kissing the old man’s hand, is said to have answered, “My own father

could not have spoken more wisely!” This remarkable advice--similar

to that which is attributed to a celebrated cardinal of modern times,

on his death-bed--seems to have governed the conduct of Ivan from the

moment that the death of the princess Anastasia released him from the

embarrassment of her counsels. She died in 1560.

IVAN’S ATROCITIES

[Sidenote: [1560 A.D.]]

The incarnate fiend, relieved from the oppressive presence of virtue,

resumed at once his original nature. If the narrative of his crimes

could be spared from the page of history, it would rescue us from a

series of details, the very relation of which must sicken the least

susceptible mind. But there was a passion so unearthly in this paragon

of monsters--he was so elevated in atrocity, and reached so sublime a

height in the perpetration of cruelties--that his life, incredible and

disgusting as it is, fills too great a space in the annals of despotism

to be passed over lightly. One of his historians charitably supposes him

to have been a lunatic.

The first act of Ivan was to banish his prudent advisers, the men who

had hitherto preserved him from the worst calamities. Those persons were

replaced by others, who studiously laboured to destroy their predecessors

by false stories of their treachery to the czarina, whose death was

unequivocally laid to their charge. That weakness, or superstition, which

is an inherent quality in all savage natures, led Ivan to believe, or

to fancy, that he believed those absurd accusations; and he acted with

promptitude upon the miserable excuse which they afforded him. He hunted

the partisans of the late ministers wherever they could be detected;

some he put to the most disgraceful deaths, others he imprisoned or

banished, varying the monotony of their solitary lives by the infliction

of exquisite tortures. One prince, who refused to join in the lascivious

pleasures of the court, was poinarded at prayers in the church; and

another was stabbed to the heart by the czar’s own hand, because he had

the presumption to remonstrate with one of the new favourites. The prince

Andrew Kurbski, a noble who, both in the cabinet and the field, had

rendered the most important services to the government and the country,

received intimation that a similar fate awaited him; and, indignant at

the prospect of such an unworthy return for his devotion to the throne of

the czars, he retired into Lithuania, and united himself with Sigismund,

the king of Poland, and, at that time, one of the most formidable enemies

of Russia. This revolt maddened Ivan beyond control; and his exasperation

was increased by the receipt of a letter from the prince, in which he

boldly charged the czar with all the miseries that were entailed upon

their common country, with having shed the blood of Israel’s elders

in the temples of the Lord; and wound up by threatening him with the

vengeance of that tribunal before which he must one day answer to the

accusations of the spirits of the murdered. The messenger who was daring

enough to present this epistle to the czar suffered for his temerity.

Ivan, on learning from whence he came, struck him across the legs with an

iron rod which he usually carried in his hand; and while the blood flowed

copiously from the wounds, leaned unconcernedly upon his rod to read the

rebellious letter. The correspondence that ensued upon this occasion,

like all the correspondence of Ivan’s which has come down to us, is

remarkable for the most blasphemous presumption and arrogant hyperbole.

He wrote all his letters with his own hand, and was proud of his literary

attainments, which, had they been directed into worthier channels, might

have rendered him a distinguished ornament of his age.

THE POLISH INVASION

The consequence of the disaffection of Kurbski was the enrolment of a

Polish army with a view to a descent upon Russia, and an invasion of the

southern provinces by the Tatars at the instigation of Sigismund. This

demonstration increased the rage of the czar: he treated everybody around

him as if they were the creatures of Kurbski: he distrusted everybody;

and put numbers to the rack and to death on the bare suspicion of their

guilt, and was overheard to lament that he could not find victims

enough to satisfy his wrath. He charged the boyars indiscriminately

with harbouring secret designs against the welfare and happiness of the

state; he dispossessed many of them of their private fortunes; and in a

letter which is still extant, he urged against them as crimes, all the

benefits which the sane portion of his rule had conferred upon Russia.

In this delirium of the fever of despotism, the clergy remonstrated

with some firmness; and, in order to obtain a fresh excuse for making

new victims, he adopted an expedient as unexpected as it was singular.

He caused a report to be spread on a sudden, that he was about to leave

Moscow; but the point of his destination, or the reason of his withdrawal

were preserved as profound secrets. The mystery of this announcement

created a panic at Moscow. The people knew not what was to come next,

whether the tyrant was about to put some scheme of universal destruction

into execution, or whether it was merely a prelude to some extravagant

exhibition of superstitious credulity, which always assumed in their eyes

the aspect of religious devotion. Agreeably to this vague announcement

of the czar’s design, one morning in December, at an early hour, the

great square of the Kremlin was filled with travelling sledges, some of

which contained gold and silver, others clothes, and not a few crosses,

images, and the relics of saints. These preparations attracted crowds of

astonished gazers, who looked on in stupid wonder at the extraordinary

sight. In a few minutes the czar, followed by his family, was seen to

descend from the palace, with the officers of his household, and a

numerous retinue. From the palace he passed on to the church of the

Assumption; and, having ordered the metropolitan to celebrate mass, he

prayed with great devotion, and received the blessing of Athanasius.

Returning from the church, he held out his hand to the assembled

multitudes, that they might satisfy themselves with a farewell kiss;

and then, having in silence, and with unusual solemnity, walked through

the groups that beset his path, he mounted his sledge, and drove off

accompanied by a regiment of horse. The inhabitants of Moscow, astonished

and terror-struck by the scene, were lost in conjecture. The city was

without a government. Ivan had so dexterously contrived to impress them

with an idea that he derived his sovereignty from God, that he found

no great difficulty ultimately in confounding to the imagination of an

enslaved and uninstructed people the distinction between God and the

sovereign; and in every crisis of disaster that occurred, the people fell

back upon their fanaticism, and looked to the czar for that succour which

could alone come from heaven. Deserted at this moment by Ivan, they began

to believe that they were deserted by Omnipotence.

A month elapsed, and no tidings were received of the destination or

proceedings of the czar. At length, at the end of that period, two

letters were received from him; the one addressed to the metropolitan,

the other to the people. The former epistle contained a recapitulation

of the disorders that had prevailed during his minority, all of which he

attributed to the clergy and the boyars; and he asserted that similar

crimes against the majesty of the state were about to break out anew.

He also complained that his attempts to secure the public tranquillity

were constantly thwarted by the evil interference of Athanasius and the

clergy; that, therefore, he had abandoned the helm of affairs, and had

left Moscow to wander about the earth. In his letter to the people, he

assured them of his good will, repeated that he had no cause of complaint

against them, and concluded by bidding them farewell for ever. It

appeared by his epistles that he had intrenched himself in Alexandrovski,

a distant fortress that lay in the depths of a gloomy forest.

These communications spread dismay amongst the Muscovites. Ivan’s

severity towards the nobility and clergy had, even against the grain

of reason, procured him no inconsiderable popularity with the bulk of

the people; and on this occasion it broke forth in lamentations, which

derived much of their force from the association of the ideas of the

throne of the czar and the throne of heaven. Groups of disconsolate

citizens assembled in the street to confer upon what was to be done; the

shops were shut, the tribunals of justice and public offices were closed,

and every kind of business was suspended. “The czar,” they exclaimed,

“has forsaken us, and we are lost. Who will now defend us against the

enemy? what are sheep without the shepherd?” In this state of despair a

deputation of the principal inhabitants waited upon the metropolitan,

and besought of him to solicit Ivan to return to his faithful subjects.

Frantic with desperate zeal, they cried, “Let him punish all those who

deserve it; has he not the power of life and death? The state cannot

remain without a head, and we will not acknowledge any other than the

one God has given us.” It was at last resolved that a numerous body of

prelates and nobles should hasten to Alexandrovski, prostrate themselves

in the dust before Ivan, and entreat of him to return to Moscow. This

proceeding had the desired effect. They discovered Ivan in his retreat,

struck the ground before him with their heads, and supplicated him for

the sake of the souls of millions, which were now perishing in his

absence as the head of the orthodox church, to resume his holy functions.

This was what Ivan wanted: he affected to be much moved by their prayers,

and with a show of reluctance consented to return, provided the clergy

pledged themselves not to interfere whenever he found it necessary to

punish those who engaged in conspiracies against the state, or against

him or his family. This artful condition was immediately granted; and the

magnanimity of a tyrant who thus entrapped the people into an admission

of the necessity of his despotic proceedings, was extolled to the skies.

The restoration of the despot was received with acclamations; but the

Muscovites were astonished by the great alteration which had taken place

in his personal appearance during his absence. Only a month, say their

historians, had elapsed, yet they hardly knew him again. His powerful

and muscular body, his expanded chest, and robust limbs, had shrunk to

a skeleton; his head, once covered with luxuriant locks, was now bald;

his rich and flowing beard was reduced to a few ragged stumps; his eyes

were dull; and his features, stamped with a ravenous ferocity, were now

deformed by apparent thought and anguish. Yet these sad changes,--the

fearful effects of the incessant tortures of a mind bewildered by its own

fury--excited the sympathies of the infatuated citizens who beheld them.

After his entry into Moscow he addressed the people, again expatiating on

the crimes of the boyars and the necessity for exercising the dominant

sovereign sway in its extreme development. To this succeeded a pious

exhortation on the vanities of the world--one of the arguments by which

he endeavoured to reconcile his victims to their miserable fate--which

he concluded by a proposal to institute a new body-guard, to be composed

of one thousand men of noble birth, chosen from the general body of the

army, and to be called the Opritshnina, or select legion. The people,

blind to the danger of conceding so great a power to the sovereign,

willingly acceded to this proposal, the execution of which was but a new

instrument for destroying their liberties. The select legion, better

known in subsequent years by the name of the Strelitz, was the foundation

of a regular standing army in Russia; for until the formation of that

corps the military force of the empire was raised upon occasions, each

nobleman contributing according to his ability to meet the exigencies of

the demand.[32]

THE REIGN OF TERROR

This was the first step to the new reign of terror; and while the select

legion was in course of formation, Ivan employed himself in the erection

of a new palace outside the walls of the Kremlin; for it appears that

his ambition or his fears produced in him a dislike for the ancient

residence of the royal family. In order to build this unnecessary palace,

he drove out all the inhabitants of the adjacent streets, and posted

his satellites around the neighbourhood to keep it free from intrusion.

Twelve thousand of the richest inhabitants were dispossessed of their

estates to make room for his designs, and upon the creatures of his

disgraceful bounty he bestowed the spoils of his plunder. The new palace

was to all intents an impregnable fortress; yet such were the secret

horrors engendered by his course of villanies, that Ivan, thinking that

it was not sufficiently secure, retired again to Alexandrovski, which

expanded from an humble village into a considerable town. It contained

a celebrated church of our Lady, which was painted on the outside with

the most gaudy colors, every brick containing the representation of a

cross. Here the czar possessed a large palace surrounded by a ditch and

ramparts: his civil and military functionaries had separate houses; and

the legionaries and trades-people had distinct streets. One of the rules

imposed by the tyrant was that no person should enter or leave the town

without his express permission, and a patrol constantly occupied the

neighbourhood to observe that this order was fulfilled. A new notion

now possessed him. Buried in the forlorn solitudes of the deep forests,

he converted his palace into a monastery, assumed the style and title

of abbot, turned his favourites into monks, and called his body of

select and depraved legionaries by the name of the Brothers. He provided

them all with black vestments, under which they wore splendid habits,

embroidered with gold and fur; and he instituted a code of practice as

austere as it was inconsistent. At three o’clock in the morning, the

matin service began, which lasted until seven; at eight mass commenced

again, and at ten the whole body, except Ivan, who stood reading aloud

from some religious book, sat down to a sumptuous repast. The remnants of

the table were afterwards distributed amongst the poor--for throughout

the whole of Ivan’s actions there was always an evident desire to win

the favour of the multitude; the czar dined after the rest, and then

descended to the dungeons to witness the infliction of tortures upon

some of his victims, which gave him extraordinary delight. At eight

o’clock vespers were read; and at ten Ivan retired to his chamber, where

he was lulled to sleep by three blind men. To diversify this monotonous

life, he sometimes visited the monasteries, or hunted wild beasts in

the woods; but he was constantly employed in issuing his instructions

upon public business, and even during prayers often gave his most cruel

and sanguinary orders. Such was the life of the tyrant in his gloomy

seclusion at Alexandrovski.

During this period, the select legion increased in number to six thousand

men, embracing in their body all the abandoned and infamous wretches who

could be procured for hire. As types of their office, they were ordered

to suspend from the saddle-bow a dog’s head and a broom--the former

to signify that they worried the enemies of the czar, and the latter

to indicate that they swept them off the face of the earth. They went

from street to street armed with long daggers and hatchets in search of

victims, who amounted daily to a score. They soon became the objects

of fear and execration. The first victims were the prince Shuiski and

his son. At the place of execution, the younger offered himself first

to the axe; but the feelings of nature were so strong in the heart of

the parent, that he could not endure to witness the death of his son,

and he insisted on receiving his death first. When his head rolled off,

his son embraced it in a passion of tears; and while the lips of the

living yet clung to the quivering and agonised features of the dead,

the executioner’s axe descended upon the son’s neck. On the same day

four other princes were beheaded, and a fifth impaled. Several boyars

were exiled, others forced to embrace the monastic vows, and a still

greater number were beggared by confiscation. These horrors increased

every day. The streets and squares were filled with dead bodies; and such

was the universal terror, that the survivors did not dare to appear to

give the rites of burial to the dead. It would appear that the murder

of individuals ceased at length to satisfy the insatiate appetite of

the monster: he longed for massacre on a more extended scale; his eyes

grew tired of the slow process of execution in detail. Accordingly he

sought for excuses to lay whole towns in blood. A few of the inhabitants

of Tortchesk happening one day to quarrel with some of the legionaries,

Ivan declared them all to be rebels, and instantly caused them _en masse_

to be either tortured to death or drowned. The inhabitants of Kolomua

were similarly disposed of, merely because they were the dependents of a

nobleman who had outgrown his favour. He spared neither sex nor age. Many

ladies were exposed in the streets, and then shot in the public sight.

THE MARCH AGAINST NOVGOROD

[Sidenote: [1569 A.D.]]

These atrocities, unparalleled in the annals of the world, form but the

prelude to the enormous crimes of this infamous prince. His march of

devastation to Novgorod may be considered as the grand act of his career

of blood. The provocation which led to the sanguinary punishment of that

city was a falsehood invented by a profligate fellow who wanted to escape

justice, and to take refuge upon the authorities, who had found him

guilty of the commission of some offences. This criminal, knowing that

Ivan rewarded all those who came before him with charges of disaffection,

wrote a letter in the name of the archbishop and inhabitants of Novgorod

to the king of Poland, offering to put the city under that monarch’s

protection. This letter he carefully concealed behind an image of the

Virgin in the church of St. Sophia, and then laid before the czar at

Moscow a private revelation of the conspiracy which he had himself

invented. Ivan despatched a trusty messenger to Novgorod, who discovered

the letter in the spot to which the informer had referred, and, upon this

evidence, the city was denounced to the vengeance of the select legion.

But as it was likely that the sight of this dreadful deed would be more

exciting than any he had hitherto witnessed, Ivan put himself at the head

of his guards, and in December 1569, accompanied by his son, departed

from Alexandrovski on his mission of destruction.

On his way he passed through the town of Klin, and exterminated the whole

of the population. When he arrived at the city of Tver, he took up his

quarters at a monastery outside the gates, and sent his soldiers into the

city to massacre and plunder the inhabitants at will. The horrors of the

scene reminded the unfortunate people of the terrible cruelties inflicted

upon their ancestors by the khan Usbak in 1327. At some of the feats of

death, Ivan himself assisted: and his confidential minister Skuratov

secretly entered the cell of a monastery where the virtuous and deposed

metropolitan was confined, and strangled him.

Proceeding onwards from Tver, Ivan depopulated all the towns on his route

to the banks of the Ilmen: and on the 2d of January his advanced guard

entered the devoted and miserable city of Novgorod. The preparations

made upon this occasion to ensure the complete carnage meditated by the

tyrant, are memorable proofs of the coolness with which the demons of the

Opritshnina executed the will of their savage leader. They ordered the

churches and convents to be closed, and demanded a temporary levy from

the monks of twenty roubles per head; and such unfortunate ecclesiastics

as were unable to comply with this exorbitant exaction were deliberately

flogged from morning till night. The houses of the inhabitants were

placed under seizure, and guarded at the entrances, and the owners thrown

into chains. This was merely preliminary to the arrival of the monarch.

In four days afterwards Ivan and the remainder arrived, and rested

within two versts of the city. On the following morning all the monks

who had failed to pay the redemption tax were taken out, beaten to

death with clubs, and their bodies sent to their respective monasteries

for interment. On the next day, accompanied as before by his son, Ivan

made his solemn entrance at the head of his troops into the city. The

archbishop, with the clergy, carrying the miraculous images, met him on

the bridge, and attempted to utter the accustomed benediction: but Ivan,

interrupting the ceremony, addressed them in a long harangue, which

consisted of an elaborate curse against their order. Having satisfied his

rage by the delivery of this anathema, he ordered the crucifix and images

to be borne into the church of St. Sophia, where he heard mass, praying

with great fervour, and then retired to the episcopal palace, where he

sat down to dinner surrounded by his boyars. Suddenly, in the midst

of the feast, he started up and raised a terrible cry. The signal was

scarcely given when his satellites, as if by magic, appeared in a body

before him, and seized the archbishop, and the officers and servants.

The palace and the cloisters were then given up to plunder. The czar’s

confessor, assisted in the sacrilege by the master of the ceremonies,

burst into the cathedral and carried off its sacred treasures, the rich

vestments, the images, and the bells. The churches and monasteries were

all pillaged, and not a fragment of the precious accumulations of the

temples and religious houses escaped the impious hands of the spoliators.

Next came the massacre of the inhabitants, which was conducted with

the utmost patience and regularity. Every day from five hundred to

one thousand Novgorodians were brought before Ivan and his son, and

immediately put to death either by torture or fire. Some were tied to

sledges and dragged into the Volkhov; others flung over the bridge into

the river--wives with their husbands, mothers with their tender infants;

while soldiers armed with long sharp spears sailed on the water to pierce

and hew those who attempted to escape by swimming. When the massacre

had continued in this way for five weeks, Ivan drew off and visited the

neighbouring monasteries, which he pillaged indiscriminately, levelling

houses, destroying cattle, and burning the corn. He then returned to

Novgorod, and inspected in person the remaining work of destruction. He

passed through the streets while his myrmidons plundered the shops and

houses, which were entered by the doors or windows indifferently: rich

silks and furs were divided by the brutal soldiery, and all unavailable

goods, such as hemp and wax and tallow, were either burnt or cast into

the river. Detachments were then sent into the adjacent domains to

plunder and murder without any respect of persons.

Having exhausted all his arts of ruin, Ivan now relaxed, and issued a

general pardon to the few wretched persons who survived, and to whom

death would have been an act of mercy. He summoned them to appear before

him; and a ghastly assemblage of skeletons, motionless and in despair,

stood in the presence of the murderer like ghosts invoked from the grave.

Untouched by the appalling sight, he addressed them in the mildest

language, desired to have their prayers that he might have a long and

happy reign, and took his leave of them in the most gracious words. The

miserable inhabitants were smote with delirium; they looked around them

in vain for the friends that had been sacrificed, for the houses and the

wealth that had been laid waste. Sixty thousand victims were stretched

dead in the streets of the once proud and opulent republic: and to

complete its melancholy doom, pestilence and a famine succeeded, sweeping

off nearly all those who had survived the extermination of the less

merciful czar. The city was now entirely depopulated, and presented the

sepulchral aspect of a vast cemetery.

The monster passed on to the city of Pskov, where, however, he consented

to forego his terrible schemes of destruction, satisfying himself with

plundering the principal inhabitants. He then returned home to Moscow,

loaded with plunder, and carrying in his train the archbishop of

Novgorod, and other distinguished victims, whom he reserved for a public

execution.

CARNAGE IN MOSCOW

He had no sooner arrived in Moscow than he caused several of his

favourites to be arrested on the ground of suspicion, but really in order

to increase the number of the wretches he designed to put to death;

and thus, naming a day for a general execution of the whole, extensive

preparations were made in the market place to carry his inhuman project

into execution. Eighteen gibbets were erected, numberless instruments of

torture were exhibited, and a great fire was made in the centre, over

which a huge copper cauldron was suspended. The inhabitants, seeing these

dreadful preliminaries, believed that the czar’s object was to set the

city on fire, and consign the people to death; and, flying from the spot,

they abandoned their shops and merchandise, leaving their property to the

mercy of the select legion. In a few hours Moscow was utterly deserted,

and not a living person was to be seen but a troop of the Opritshnina

ranged in gloomy silence round the gibbets and blazing fire. Presently

the beating of drums rose upon the air, and the czar was seen advancing

on horseback, accompanied by his favourite son, and followed by his

devoted guards. In the rear came the spectral troop of victims, in number

about three hundred, wan and bloody, and hardly able to crawl upon the

ground. On perceiving that the theatre of carnage was destitute of an

audience, Ivan commanded his soldiers to collect the inhabitants; and,

after a short pause, finding that they did not arrive with promptitude,

he went in person to demand their presence at the treat he had prepared

for them, assuring them at the same time of the good-will he entertained

towards them. The wretched Muscovites dared not disobey him, and hurrying

in terror from their hiding places, they crowded to the scene of

execution, which was speedily filled with spectators even to the roofs of

the houses. Then the dreadful rites began. The czar addressed the people

with exclamations upon the righteousness of the punishments he was about

to inflict, and the people, oppressed with horror, replied in terms of

approbation. A crowd of one hundred and twenty victims, who were declared

to be less guilty than the rest, were first separated from the others and

pardoned. The condemned were called one by one, and some, after hearing

the accusation in general terms from the lips of the czar, accompanied

by occasional blows on the head from a whip which he held in his hand,

were given over to the assassins, who hung them up by the feet, and then

cut them to pieces, or plunged them half alive into the boiling cauldron.

These executions, which are too horrible to be related in detail, lasted

for about four hours; during which time nearly two hundred victims,

innocent of the crimes with which they were charged, suffered deaths of

the most exquisite and prolonged agony.

A despotism so sanguinary and so wanton was well calculated to

endanger the safety of those institutions which the wisdom of others

had established. Russia, distracted through all her provinces by the

atrocities of Ivan, soon became a prey to those unwearied foes who never

lost an opportunity of taking advantage of her domestic difficulties.

The declaration of Ivan’s supremacy to his unfortunate subjects was, “I

am your god as God is mine; whose throne is surrounded by archangels,

as is the throne of God.” But this piece of blasphemy, which had the

effect of making the Russians tremble, only increased the determination

of his external enemies. Sweden had already wrested Esthonia from him;

Kettler, the last grand-master of the Livonian knights, satisfied himself

with Courland and Semigallia; while Battori of Poland, the successor of

Sigismund Augustus, deprived him of Livonia, one of the most important

points in his dominions. In 1566, Ivan laid before an assembly of the

states-general, consisting of a convocation of ecclesiastics, nobles,

citizens, and traders, a statement of his negotiations with Poland on the

subject of Livonia; but as his real object was to assert his tyrannical

power rather than to gain the political advantages he pointed out, the

issue of the assembly was merely an admission from all the parties

present that the will of the czar was indisputable, and that they had no

right even to tender him their advice. The great advantage of recovering

Livonia from Poland was obviously to secure it as an outlet upon the

Baltic for Russian commerce, and as a means of opening a communication

with Europe. To the ministry of Sylvester and Adaschev belongs the

credit of this admirable project; but a design which they would have

accomplished with comparative facility, was suffered by Ivan to be wasted

in fruitless contentions.

Battori terrified Ivan in the midst of his tyrannies; and the monster who

could visit his people with such an example of cruelties, crouched before

the king of Poland. His fear of Battori carried him to extremes. He not

only supplicated terms at his hands, but suffered him to offer personal

insults to the officers who represented the czar at his court. The

grovelling measures and cowardice of Ivan disgusted his adversary; and in

reply to some fresh instance of dastardly submission, Battori charged him

with the grossest crimes--with having falsified the articles of treaties,

and applied inhuman tortures to his peoples. The letter containing

these strong, but just, animadversions, closed with a challenge to

single combat, which the poverty of the czar’s spirit met by renewed

protestations of the most abject character.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIVONIA

At length, urged by the clamour of his advisers, Ivan organised an army

of three hundred thousand men; but, although he could instigate and

assist at the most revolting punishments, he shrunk from a personal share

in the numerous petty conflicts which took place between his forces

and the Livonian knights. Instead of advancing boldly upon the enemy,

who could not have maintained war against the superior numbers of the

Russians, he suffered himself to be shielded by a jesuit, the pope’s

envoy, whose intercession with Battori he had procured by representing,

with consummate audacity, that he hoped to be able to effect the

conversion of the Russians to catholicism. Whenever he fell in with

the Livonians, and the collision terminated in victory, he committed

the wildest excesses: plundered the captives of their wealth, which he

transmitted to his own private coffers, and then sentenced the prisoners

to be flung into boiling cauldrons, spitted on lances, or roasted at

fires which he amused himself by stirring--while the sacrificial murders

were in progress. Wars so irregularly conducted, and terminating in such

frightful revenge could not but entail calamities upon the empire. All

that was gained by the long struggle for Livonia, was the occasional

plunder which Ivan appropriated to himself.

To support the system of profligate expenditure to which the whole life

of this extraordinary man inevitably led, he laid on the most exorbitant

taxes, and lent himself to the most unjust monopolies. Nor was he

satisfied with exceeding in this way the most arbitrary examples that had

preceded him; but, with a recklessness of human life, and a disregard of

the common decencies and obligations of the worst condition of society,

he proceeded to rifle his subjects of their private means, sometimes upon

slight pretences, but oftener without any pretence whatever. It would

almost appear that his appetite for sights of destruction had palled with

ordinary gratification; and that he had jaded his invention to discover

new modes of cruelty. Having exhausted in all its varieties the mere art

of slaughter, he proceeded to make his objects violate before his eyes

the sacred feelings of nature. He demanded fratricide and parricide at

their hands: one man was forced to kill his father, another his brother:

eight hundred women were drowned, and, bursting into the houses of his

victims, he compelled the survivors to point out the places where the

remnant of their wealth was concealed. His excesses carried him beyond

all law, human and divine. He assumed the place, and even usurped the

attributes of the Deity, and identified himself to a proverb with the

Creator. Not content with indulging his insane passions in the frenzy of

an undisciplined mind, he trampled the usages of Russia under foot, and

married seven wives--which was held by the tenets of the Greek religion

to be a crime of great magnitude.[g]

PROJECTS OF ALLIANCE WITH ENGLAND

[Sidenote: [1582-1584 A.D.]]

The unfortunate issue of the war with Sweden did not however make Ivan

the Terrible give up the idea of compensating himself for his losses; he

continued to seek for alliances with European states. With this object

Theodore Pissemski was sent to England in 1582 with instructions to

endeavour to bring about a close alliance with Elizabeth against his

enemy the king of Poland, and at the same time to enter into matrimonial

negotiations for the czar with the queen’s relative, Maria Hastings. The

English would not entertain either project, but only sought to obtain an

exemption from entry duties for their trade with Russia. In 1583 Jeremiah

Bowes was sent to Moscow from England with the delicate mission of

attaining this object. The negotiations dragged on a long time; first the

czar sent away Bowes and then recalled him again, and in fact they had

not come to an end before the death of Ivan the Terrible.[b]

DEATH OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE

[Sidenote: [1584 A.D.]]

We have already seen what was the life of Ivan: we shall now see its

ending--which was equally astonishing--desirable indeed for mankind,

but terrifying to the imagination; for the tyrant died as he had lived,

that is, exterminating men, although in contemporary narratives there is

no mention of his last victims.[33] Strong in bodily constitution, Ivan

had hoped for a long life; but what bodily strength could withstand the

furious rage of the passions that agitated the sombre existence of the

tyrant? The continued outbursts of wrath and fear, the racking of the

unrepentant conscience, the odious transports of abominable sensuality,

the torments of shame, the impotent fury at the reverses of his arms,

finally the horrible remembrance of the murder of his own son, had

exhausted the measure of Ivan’s strength. At times he experienced a

painful languor, the precursory symptom of dissolution, but he struggled

against it and did not noticeably weaken until the winter of the year

1584. At that time a comet appeared in the sky between the churches of

Ivan the Great and of the Annunciation, which had the form of a cross.

Curious to see it, Ivan went out on the red staircase, gazed at it long,

grew pale, and said to those around him: “there is the portent of my

death.” Pursued by this idea, it is said that he caused astrologers and

pretended magicians to be sought for throughout Russia and Lapland,

brought together about sixty of them, assigned to them a house in Moscow,

and daily sent his favourite Belski, to confer with them concerning the

comet. Soon he fell dangerously ill. It is said that the astrologers

predicted his death on the 18th of March. During February he was still

able to occupy himself with affairs; but on the 10th of March a courier

was despatched to delay the arrival of the Lithuanian ambassador who was

on his way to Moscow, by reason of the illness of the czar. Ivan himself

had given the order; he had still hopes of recovery, nevertheless he

called together the boyars and commanded that his will and testament

should be written down. He declared the czarevitch Theodore heir to

the throne and monarchy, and chose well-known men for councillors to

watch over the prosperity of the state and lighten for Theodore (who

was feeble both in mind and body) the burden of the cares of the state;

these men were: Prince Ivan Petrovitch Shuiski (the famous defender of

Pskov), Ivan Mstislavski, son of a niece of the grand prince Vasili,

Nikita Romanovitch Iuriev (brother of Ivan’s first wife, the virtuous

Anastasia), Boris Godunov, and Belski. To the young Dmitri and his mother

he assigned the town of Uglitch as appanage, the boy’s education to be

exclusively confided to Belski. He declared his gratitude to all his

boyars and voyevods, calling them his friends and companions in arms in

the conquest of unbelieving kingdoms, in the victories gained over the

knights of the Livonian order, the khan, and the sultan. He exhorted

Theodore to rule piously, lovingly and mercifully, advising him and the

five chief dignitaries of the state to avoid war with Christian powers.

He spoke of the disastrous consequences of the wars with Lithuania and

Sweden, deplored the exhaustion of Russia, enjoined a reduction of the

taxes and the liberation of all captives, even of the Lithuanian and

German prisoners.

The strength of the sick man presently left him; his thoughts were

beclouded; stretched in unconsciousness upon his bed, Ivan called loudly

for his murdered son, imagined he saw him and spoke to him tenderly. On

the 17th of March he felt better from the effects of a warm bath, so

that he commanded the Lithuanian ambassador to come without delay from

Mozhaisk to Moscow. The next day (if Horsey is to be believed) he said

to Belski, “Go and tell those liars, the astrologers, that they shall

die: according to their fables I am to die now, but I feel a great deal

better.” But, answered the astrologers, the day has not yet passed. A

bath was again prepared for the czar in which he remained about three

hours, then he lay down on his bed and rested. Soon he asked for a

chessboard, and sitting up in bed in his dressing-gown, he himself set

up the chessmen and wanted to play with Belski.[34] Suddenly he fell

back and closed his eyes for all eternity. The doctors rubbed him with

strengthening fluids, while the metropolitan--probably fulfilling the

will of Ivan that had been long known to him--read the prayers for the

taking of orders over the dying man, giving him the monastic names of

Jonas. During these moments a deep silence reigned throughout the palace

and the capital; people waited in expectancy, but nobody dared to ask.

Ivan lay already dead, yet he appeared still terrible to the surrounding

courtiers, who for a long time could not believe their eyes and did not

announce his death. On the third day magnificent obsequies took place in

the church of St. Michael.

KARAMZIN’S ESTIMATE OF IVAN

Amidst the various and heavy trials imposed by destiny on Russia, besides

the miseries of the feudal or appanage system, besides the Mongolian

yoke, Russia had also to bear the ferocity of the autocrat-tormentor: yet

she preserved her love for autocracy, believing that plagues, earthquakes

and tyrants are sent by God. Instead of breaking the iron sceptre in

the hands of Ivan, she bore for twenty-four years with the destroyer,

arming herself solely with prayer and patience in order that in happier

times she might have a Peter the Great, a Catherine II (history does not

like to name the living[35]). Magnanimously submissive, the martyrs

died on the scaffold like the Greeks at Thermopylæ, for their country,

their faith and fealty, without thought of rebellion or riot. In order

to excuse Ivan’s cruelties some foreign historians have spoken of plots

and conspiracies against which they were directed; but such plots only

existed in the troubled mind of the czar, as all our chronicles and state

papers bear witness. The clergy, the boyars, the prominent citizens would

not have called forth the wild beast from his lair of Alexandrovski,

if they had had thoughts of the treachery imputed to them with as much

absurdity as witchcraft. No, the tiger gorged himself with the blood of

the lambs, and his victims, casting a last glance on the distressful

earth, demanded from their contemporaries and from posterity both justice

and compassionate remembrance.

In spite of all speculative explanations, the character of Ivan, a

virtuous hero in his youth, and an insatiable, bloody tyrant in the years

of his manhood and old age, remains an enigma, and we should doubt the

truth of the most trustworthy narratives concerning him, if the history

of other nations did not show us equally astonishing examples; if for

instance Caligula, at first a model for sovereigns and afterwards a

monster of cruelty--if Nero, the pupil of the wise Seneca, an object of

love and an object of loathing, had not reigned at Rome.

Thus Ivan possessed a superior intellect, he was not uneducated, and

his knowledge was united to an uncommon gift of speech, yet he was the

shameless slave of the most abominable vices. He had an unusually fine

memory, he knew the Bible by heart, he was also well acquainted with

Greek and Roman history, besides the history of his own country, and only

used his knowledge in order to give the most absurd interpretations in

favour of tyranny. He boasted of his firmness and self control, because

he could laugh loudly in the hour of fear and of inward uneasiness.

He boasted of his clemency and generosity, because he enriched his

favourites with the possessions of the boyars and citizens who had

fallen into disgrace. He boasted of his justice, and punished with

equal satisfaction the meritorious and the criminal. He boasted of his

sovereign spirit and of knowing how to maintain the sovereign dignity,

ordering that an elephant which had been sent to him from Persia should

be cut to pieces because the animal would not kneel before him, and

cruelly punishing the unfortunate courtiers who dared to play at cards

or chess better than his majesty. Finally he prided himself on his deep

statecraft in exterminating systematically, at certain fixed epochs,

with cold blooded calculation, some of the most illustrious families

under the pretext of their being dangerous to the royal power; raising

to their rank new and mean families; touching with his destroying hand

even the future, for like a swarm of famine-bringing insects, the band of

informers, of calumniators, of “_opritchniki_”[36] that he had formed,

left, as they disappeared, the seed of evil among the people, and if the

yoke of Bati had lowered the spirit of the Russians, there is no doubt

that the reign of Ivan did nothing to raise it.

But justice must be rendered even to a tyrant: even in the extremity of

evil, Ivan at times seems the phantom, as it were, of a great monarch,

zealous, unwearying, often showing proofs of great penetration in

state matters. For valour he liked to compare himself to Alexander of

Macedonia, although there was not a shadow of courage in his soul: yet

he was a conqueror; in his outward policy he followed unswervingly the

great schemes of his grandfather. He wanted justice to be observed in

the tribunals, and not frequently himself examined the lawsuits, listened

to complaints, read every paper laid before him, and was prompt in

his decisions. He punished the oppressors of the people, unscrupulous

functionaries, and extortioners, both corporally and by putting them

to shame (he had them clothed in sumptuous attire, seated in carts and

driven by the hangmen through the streets). He forbade all drunken

excesses and only allowed the people to divert themselves in the public

houses during the Easter holidays and at Christmastide; at every other

time drunken people were sent to prison. Although he did not like daring

reproaches, yet at times Ivan detested coarse flattery; of the latter

we will give an instance: The voyevods, the princes Shtcherbati and

Iri Boriatinski, who had been ransomed by the czar from captivity in

Lithuania, were honoured with his favour, were given presents, and had

the distinction of dining with him. He questioned them about Lithuania.

Shtcherbati spoke the truth, but Boriatinski lied shamelessly, averring

that the king had neither troops nor fortresses and trembled at the name

of Ivan. “Poor king!” said Ivan quietly, shaking his head: “how I pity

thee!” and suddenly seizing his staff he broke it to splinters over

Boriatinski’s back, saying: “Take that, you shameless fellow, for your

flagrant lying!”

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. BASIL, MOSCOW

(Built by Ivan the Terrible, who considered it so beautiful that he had

the architect’s eyes put out that he might not build another)]

Ivan was distinguished by a wise tolerance in matters of religion

(excepting that of the Jews); but although he at first allowed the

Lutherans and the Calvinists to have churches in Moscow, five years later

he ordered their churches to be burned. It is possible, however, that he

had heard of the people’s dissatisfaction and was afraid of some scandal;

in any case he did not hinder their meeting for worship in the houses of

their pastors. He was fond of disputing with learned Germans upon matters

of faith and was not angry at contradiction: thus in the year 1570 he

had a solemn discussion in the palace of the Kremlin with the Lutheran

theologian Rotsita, whom he accused of heresy: Rotsita was seated before

him on a raised platform covered with rich carpets; he spoke boldly in

defence of the dogmas of the Augsburg Confession, and was honoured with

tokens of the czar’s favour.

Ivan evinced esteem for the arts and sciences, showing marks of

favour to educated foreigners. Although he did not found academies,

yet he contributed to popular education by increasing the number of

ecclesiastical schools where the laity also could study reading, writing,

religion, and even history, and in particular prepare to become clerks

in the chanceries; to the shame of the boyars, many of whom were not yet

able to write. Finally Ivan is famous in Russian history as a lawgiver

and organiser of the state.[f]

IVAN THE TERRIBLE COMPARED WITH PETER THE GREAT

Deeply tragic were the life and destiny of Ivan the Terrible! As we

penetrate into the full signification of his work, we are involuntarily

drawn to the comparison which suggests itself between him and the

hero czar of the eighteenth century. It was not without reason that,

according to tradition, Peter looked upon Ivan as his precursor: they

had both entertained the same projects. Even in the circumstances of

their childhood and early youth there were points of resemblance; but

Ivan had not a tender, loving mother at his side, and this difference

was an essential one. There is also another very essential difference:

by nature Ivan was a man of more abstract character, less capable of and

less inclined to practical activity; for this reason he at times confided

in others, then suddenly became suspicious, but never acted himself. It

appeared to him that the duty of a czar was only to direct the activity

of others. Although this is a true view in ordinary times, it may

sometimes become a false one, and Peter served Russia as much with the

carpenter’s hatchet as he did with the sword of Pultowa. The practical

Peter believed in his people, and if at times he overstrained the bow,

yet it was as if he felt that matters would adjust themselves. Ivan

lost faith in everything and everyone; it may also be added that Peter

thought less of himself and in this respect he was larger minded than his

terrible predecessor. The painful impression produced on the historian

by Ivan’s trying to secure a refuge in England, has no parallel in the

life of Peter. Also, however terrible were the executions and punishments

in the time of Peter, and although at times there may be observed in

them signs of personal irritation, yet the impression produced by the

narrative of the devastations in Novgorod is still more distressing.

Practical statesmen never go to such lengths as abstract theorists: Peter

never entered into theoretical controversies, which were foreign to his

nature. For the same reason Peter, however well disposed he might be

towards foreigners, always counted himself a Russian, while Ivan took

pleasure in tracing the descent of his race from Cæsar Augustus. It was

also for this reason that Peter could not entirely abase himself in

sensual delights; he had too much work on his hands; his was a practical,

not a contemplative nature. And this is one of the principal causes of

Peter’s success and Ivan’s failure; another and more important reason

lies in the fact that Russia was weaker in the time of the Terrible czar

than in the time of Peter the Great.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[24] From _ókolo_, about, around--persons about the czar.

[25] _Gospodá_, plural of _gospodin_.

[26] Literally “beat his forehead.”

[27] Daughter of Stephen, Gospodin of Moldavia, married to Ivan’s son

Ivan.

[28] [A title borne by the Russian emperors.]

[29] Mengli Girai’s rivals: Adir, Nordovlat, and Zenebek, fled to Moscow

and were detained by Ivan, who thus rendered Mengli Girai a service at

the same time that he held out their liberation as a tacit menace.[a]

[30] Soloviov[h] decisively confutes the story that the cause of Ahmed’s

retreat was the destruction of Sarai by Nordovlat.

[31] Thus the courtiers regarded it as a matter of course that he should

take away from his envoys the gifts made to them by the sovereigns to

whom they had been accredited.

[32] [The Opritshnina, composed at first, or proposed to be composed, of

men of noble birth, was really filled by persons of the lowest class, who

acted as spies, informers and assassins.]

[33] Oderborn says that a few days before his death Ivan had six noblemen

executed. In other narratives it is only said that he destroyed men up to

the very end of his life.

[34] The historian Kostomarov relates that Ivan could not set the king in

its place and fell back dead as he endeavoured to do so.

[35] [A compliment to Alexander I, the author’s patron.]

[36] The life guards of Ivan the Terrible.

[Illustration]