Krim Tartars, and threatened with the aggression of the great Mohametan
power of South-East Europe, Ivan seemed to find among his own subjects
enemies more punishable than any who menaced him from without. Moskva
and Aleksandrov had been the scene of many a nightmare deed of cruelty;
many an action of injustice and oppression had been perpetrated by the
fiend-hearted Opritchniki in the country districts; but now something
on a larger scale was to be attempted. The “episode of Novgorod,” one
of the most terrible events of a terrible reign, is introduced by some
of the earlier historians in a somewhat fantastic manner. One Petr, a
native of Volhynia, who had suffered for some offence at the hands of
the Novgorodskie authorities, revenged himself by calumniating the city
rulers in the too susceptible mind of the Tzar; his story was that a
letter, addressed to Sigismund-August, and signed by the Archbishop
(Pimen) and the leading inhabitants of the city, offering to transfer
their allegiance to the Polish monarch, had been hidden behind the
image of the Mother-of-God in the Sofia Cathedral at Novgorod, where
it was eventually found by a confidential agent dispatched by Ivan
from Moskva.[155] Why a letter intended for the King of Poland, and
presumedly of some urgency, should have been placed, and left, in
such a curious position, is not very apparent. That such treason was
actually meditated is at least possible. Novgorod, clinging to the
memory of lost liberties and departed glories, may not unnaturally
have turned wistful eyes towards any protector who might save her from
a dynasty which, in the person of Ivan III., had wrought her such
lasting injury, and in the person of his grandson threatened her with
further oppressions. The morbidly suspicious mind of the Tzar would
not be without apprehension on this score, and in this case there
is no reason to presuppose that evidence, real or concocted, was an
essential preliminary to preventative action. In the autumn of 1569
the incriminating letter is said to have been found. In December the
Tzar, with the Tzarevitch Ivan, his favourite boyarins, and an army
of Opritchniki, set out on a punitive expedition against Novgorod
and the neighbouring towns. Like a python encoiling its prey this
strange peregrinating “bed of justice” moved towards the devoted city,
leaving an ugly streak of blood and desolation in its track. Klin, a
small township near Tver, was the starting-point of the red carnival.
What exact offence the inhabitants had committed in the eyes of their
sovereign it is impossible to say, since they could scarcely have been
suspected of complicity in the alleged treasonable correspondence
with Sigismund-August. The Tzar, however, let slip his “peculiars”
on them, and murder and pillage became the order of the day. “Houses
and streets were filled with corpses, and neither women nor children
were spared.”[156] Hence onward, at Tver, Torjhok, Gorodnya, and in
all the villages as far as lake Ilmen, the same scenes of blood and
rapine were enacted; the roads leading to Novgorod were strewn with
dead bodies.[157] It was during this grisly progress through the dark
snow-swathed pine-forests, where the ravens watched over the frozen
corpses, and the wolves feasted on what the Kromiesniki left behind
them, that Maluta Skouratov turned aside to the Otrotch monastery and
transacted his business with the ex-Metropolitan Filipp. Truly the
frosts of winter seemed to have got into men’s blood and all feelings
of mercy and goodwill to have evaporated at the festivals of Noel.
To the Novgorodskie, awaiting the arrival of this dread visitation,
tidings kept pouring in which might well have roused them to the
defiance of despair, and armed them against their fate. [Sidenote:
Jan. 1570] The Opritchniki had already drawn a cordon round the
slobodas and outskirts of the city, and were ransacking the numerous
monasteries which studded the sandy plain, putting to death such of
the inmates as showed the least sign of opposition. But there was no
Martha to organise resistance, no Mstislav the Brave to step in between
Novgorod and her doom. When Ivan, accompanied by his son, courtiers,
and a formidable body-guard of Strielitz, made his entry into the
terror-stricken city, he was met on the famous Volkhov bridge by the
Vladuika Pimen at the head of the clergy and principal citizens, with
the cross and sacred banners displayed. The miraculous ikon, which had
repelled the attack of the Souzdalskie besiegers, failed to turn the
heart of the Tzar, and the Archbishop’s quavering blessing was refused.
Novgorod was given over to slaughter and pillage and Pimen himself was
spared only to perform antics degrading alike to his manhood and his
office. For six weeks the city and its outskirts was a continued scene
of confiscation and wholesale execution; numbers of the inhabitants
were flung into the Volkhov, at a point near the bridge where its
waters never freeze, and so many were disposed of in this way that lake
Ladoga is said to have been tainted by the carrion. The total number of
the victims has been variously computed, contemporary accounts fixing
the death-roll from 2770, “besides women and common folk,” to the
maximum and probably enormously exaggerated figure of 60,000.[158] In a
curious and appallingly suggestive register, preserved at the Kirillov
monastery, in which Ivan used to keep a reckoning of his victims and
apparently apprise his God of their dispatch, there is the following
entry: “O Lord! give peace to the souls of 1505 of Thy servants,
Novgorodians.”[159] The number of unburied corpses was sufficiently
great to cause a pestilence, which rounded off the Tzar’s act of
vengeance. After having denuded the celebrated Cathedral of its bells,
vessels, ikons and other treasures, and destroyed cattle, grain, and
whatever could not be conveniently carried off, Ivan called together
the wretched remnant of the citizens and graciously asked for their
prayers on behalf of himself and his family.
Then, in the middle of February, he departed towards Pskov, leaving
the silent city alone with its dead. A romantic, but not necessarily
romancing, element runs through the account of Ivan’s dealings with
Pskov. Sharing in the conjectural guilt for which Novgorod had been so
mercilessly chastised, the Tzar had devised for the city on the Peipus
a similar punishment. Halting at one of the monasteries without the
walls, on the eve of his intended assize, he was moved by hearing the
bells of all the churches and religious houses around toll at midnight,
in funeral anticipation of the threatened butchery. His feelings were
still further worked upon by the appearance on the scene of a local
celebrity, one Nikolai, half-hermit, half-charlatan, who offered him
meat, and on being indignantly rebuked--it was Lent--boldly accused
the Tzar of feeding on human bodies. This stark, uncanny being, in
the vigorous words of Sir Jerome Horsey, an adventurous Englishman
who visited Moskovy several times in various capacities, “with bold
Imprecations and Exorcismes calling him Blood-sucker and Deuourer of
Christian flesh, swore by his Angell that hee should not escape death
by a present Thunderbolt, if he or any of his did touch the least
childs haire in that Citie.”[160] It is not improbable that this
madman and fanatic may have made a strong impression upon a kindred
spirit, and the unusual occurrence of a thunderstorm in February, which
the chronicles relate, would have added to the Tzar’s superstitious
uneasiness. Of the existence of this “sorcerer” Horsey gives evidence
at first hand: “I saw this Impostor, a foule creature; hee went naked
Winter and Summer.... His Holinesse could not endure me,” he adds,
which, as the Englishman was openly sceptical as to his supernatural
powers, was not wonderful. Whatever may have influenced the Tzar to an
unwonted deviation into humanity, he suddenly stayed his avenging hand
and returned to Moskva with his Opritchniks, his Court, and the captive
Archbishop. That he was in any way satiated with cruelty does not
appear, as in the same year he treated the capital to a blood-carnival
on a grander scale than any it had yet witnessed. What gave added alarm
to this new reign of terror was that no one was safe from implication,
for the Tzar’s own seeming favourites and the most trusted of his
creatures were arrested one after the other. The Basmanovs, father
and son, Viskovatui, the Treasurer Founikov, Athanasie Viazemskie,
Ivan Vorontzov, and scores of other princes and boyarins were pounced
upon and hurried off into safe keeping, while sinister preparations
went forward in the great square of the Kitai-gorod. On the 25th July
all was in readiness; eighteen gibbets and a large cauldron suspended
over a glowing furnace, with other implements of punishment, met the
Tzar’s eye as he rode with Maluta Skouratov and other yet surviving
favourites on to the scene of execution. But one important item was
lacking; where were the onlookers? The great square was deserted, for
the Moskvitchi had hidden themselves away from the alarming spectacle
which the Gosoudar had prepared for them; there was no knowing where
the matter would stop. Ivan sent his soldiers to summon his subjects
to the show, and even went in person to beat up the skulking citizens,
who flocked with quaking hearts to the various coigns of vantage round
the Red Place. The audience having been secured, the prisoners were
marched out in a long file to the scene of their punishment. The crowd,
scanning the wan faces of the victims, missed that of Viazemskie, who
had died under torture, and the Basmanovs were also absent. A crowning
horror was reserved for them. But see, the Tzar speaks. Raising his
voice that all might hear, he demanded of the people of Moskva if the
tortures and executions they were about to witness seemed to them just?
They did, they did. No shred of hope could the doomed men grasp from
that hoarse murmur of servile approbation. Like beaten gladiators,
reading their fate in the upturned thumbs and hard faces of the
onlookers, they stood unfriended before that vast multitude. I.H.S. has
taken the place of the S.P.Q.R., but fifteen hundred years have not
materially removed Christian Moskva from the ethic-level of pagan Rome.
Up to the mounted monarch was led the first victim, Viskovatui, whom
Ivan accused of treasonable correspondence with the King of Poland,
with the Sultan, and with the Krim Khan, emphasising his accusations
by slashing the boyarin’s face with his whip. Bound, gagged, and hung
by the feet, he was forthwith hacked to pieces; Maluta Skouratov,
descending from his horse, sliced off an ear by way of a beginning.
Founikov was dispatched by alternate drenching with boiling and iced
water, and “expired in horrible torments.” Others, to the number of
about 200, were put to death in various manners, the Tzar himself
having the credit of impaling one old man on his lance.[161] On what
evidence, if any, these men were found guilty of treason and disloyalty
it is impossible to know, but this at least may be remarked, that,
enjoying as they did the Tzar’s favour and patronage, they had scarcely
a motive for wishing to overturn or undermine his authority. The
executions on the Red Place, renewed after an interval of a few days,
were not the only outlet for the monarch’s anger or blood-thirst; other
evil deeds are related of this reign of terror, this running amok of a
human being among his unresisting fellows. It was said that Ivan forced
Thedor Basmanov, the “angel-faced,” to kill his own father: a ghastly
deed which did not save the perpetrator from a death by torture, and
which at least need not be unreservedly believed in. Torture was also
meted out to the widows of some of the most distinguished of the
victims of the Red Place, and eighty were said to have been flung
into the Moskva river. Such a glut of corpses defied expeditious or
thorough burial, and for many days and nights the inhabitants of that
horror-haunted city witnessed packs of dogs crunching and tearing
human bones and flesh in the dry ditches beneath the Kreml walls and
in the open spaces of the Kitai-gorod. Some of the bodies appear to
have found their way into the tzarskie fish-ponds, and carp and pike
grew bloated on the rich banquet.[162] And amid the gloom and stifled
wailing the dread author of it all, the man of terror and blood and
punishments, prostrates himself daily in the holy places, bumping his
forehead on the pavement before the sacred ikons. Splendid triumph of
the Nazarene! Oh glorious irony! The great Orthodox Tzar, conqueror of
Kazan and Astrakhan and Polotzk, master of the lives and liberties of
his trembling subjects, bows in abject worship before the picture of a
woman and a little child.
Amid the seemingly indiscriminating severities with which Ivan cowed
the inhabitants of his principal cities, his mind was engaged in
the conduct of a dexterous and well-thought-out foreign policy. The
same year that witnessed the episode of Novgorod and the butchery
in the Kitai-gorod was signalised by a long-laboured truce (to run
for three years) between Moskovy and Poland. [Sidenote: 1570] The
growing expectancy of a vacancy of the Polish-Lit’uanian throne had no
doubt something to do with this reconciliation. That Ivan seriously
put himself forward as a candidate for that extremely limited and
curtailed monarchy seems to be the case, judging from the significant
instructions which his ambassadors received, to keep strict silence,
when in Poland, on the subject of the Tzar’s domestic tyrannies.[163]
Equally surprising, but nevertheless credit-worthy, the Tzar was not
without a party among the liberty and license-loving Polish nobles,
many of whom, particularly at Warszawa, were said to be adopting
Moskovite costume in view of a coming dynastic displacement. His
adherents were chiefly among the _szlachta_, or small nobility, who
numbered in their ranks many of the Reformed persuasion. At this
period Protestants and Orthodox were lumped together in Poland, under
the common designation of Dissidents, and suffered equally at the
hands of the dominant Catholics. Hence many members of the Diet were
more alarmed at the prospect of an Austrian, or other Jesuit-ridden
king, than at the possible unmanageability of the Moskovite Tzar.
While awaiting the drift of events in Poland, Ivan set in motion a
course of action by which he hoped to drive the Swedes out of the
Baltic provinces. His idea was to enlist the sympathy and support
of the long-suffering Livlanders and Estlanders by setting up a
puppet king who should govern the old lands of the Bund, under the
suzerainty of Moskva. The title of King of Livland, offered, according
to contemporary report, successively to ex-Master von Fürstenberg and
the Duke of Kourland (by both of whom it was declined), was eventually
accepted by the ambitious but effete Magnus of Holstein, Duke of Oesel
and Wiek. [Sidenote: (1570)] Magnus paid a visit to Moskva--in some
trepidation, for the city was getting an unhealthy reputation--and
returned with the Tzar’s proclamation of his new dignity, backed up by
five-and-twenty thousand Russian troops. With this force and his own
German guards, the Holsteiner advanced upon Revel, which, however, held
out against both his wiles and his assaults; the latter he discontinued
after a siege of thirty weeks’ duration (16th March 1571), burning
his camp-works and withdrawing his army into quarters. This rebuff
settled the fate of the vassal “kingdom.” In another direction Ivan’s
foreign policy had been equally unsuccessful--in an attempt, namely,
to cultivate friendly relations with the Ottoman power. The embassy
which he sent in 1570 to Constantinople, to congratulate Sultan Selim
on his accession, was coldly received, and a demand put forward for
the relinquishing of the Russian sovereignty over Kazan and Astrakhan.
The uneasiness which the Tzar felt with regard to the possibility
of a forward Mussulman movement was increased by news which was
brought to Moskva in the spring of 1571 of a warlike activity among
the Krimskie Tartars. Whether instigated by Turkish influences, or
by the anti-Moskovite party in Poland, or whether acting on his own
initiative, Devlet-Girei was certainly preparing for an inroad upon
Russian territory, and Ivan hastily assembled an army of 50,000 men,
which he posted, under the leadership of several voevodas, along the
banks of the Oka, where the enemy was expected to pass. The invading
force, said to be 120,000 strong, eluded this first line of defence
and bore straight upon Moskva. The Tzar, who might with the forces
at his disposal have held the Tartars in check till the army of the
Oka came up on their flank, fled, as his father Vasili had done, as
most of the Grand Princes of Moskva had from time to time done under
similar circumstances, and sheltered himself at Rostov, leaving the
capital to its fate. Weakened and dispirited by this desertion, the
force which had raced back from the Oka and arrived at much the same
time as the Krimskies made no attempt to defend the slobodas and
outlying quarters of the city, which were set on fire by the Khan’s
orders. Ignorant, probably, of the strength of the Russian garrison,
and fearing to be taken unawares by a reinforcement from the north,
the Tartars made no further move upon the city, and indeed the rapid
spread of the flames made pillage impossible. With the exception of
the stone-built Kreml, nearly the whole town was destroyed, and the
loss of life, though probably enormously exaggerated by contemporary
writers, was undoubtedly very great. “Then might you haue seene a
lametable spectacle,” writes an English traveller twenty years later,
“... the people burning in their houses and streates, but most of all
such as laboured to passe out of the gates farthest from the enemie,
where meeting together in a mighty throng, and so pressing euery
man to preuent another, wedged themselves so fast within the gate,
and streates neare vnto it, as that three ranks walked one vpon the
others head, the vppermost treading downe those that were lower: so
that there perished at that time (as was sayd) by the fire and the
presse, the number of 800,000 people, or more.”[164] Or less. Another
Englishman, Sir Jerome Horsey, bears witness to the fact that numbers
of the inhabitants, plunging, with all their removable valuables, into
the river, to escape from the flames and the Tartars, sank beneath
its waters, and that long after the bodies had been disposed of,
it was a fashionable amusement to drag the river bed for submerged
treasure, adding significantly, “I my selfe was somewhat the better
for that fishing.” Satisfied with the striking and easily-accomplished
chastisement which he had inflicted upon the half-dreaded,
half-despised enemy, the Khan withdrew his Hordes, carrying with
him immense numbers of captured Moskovites, and pursued at a safe
distance by the tzarskie voevodas. Ivan, returning to his desolated
capital and dreading a renewal of the struggle with an antagonist,
formidable in himself and possibly a forerunner of Turkish hostility,
began to reckon on the necessity of purchasing peace by the surrender
of Astrakhan. While, however, the victorious Tartar was plaguing him
with taunting messages and importunate demands, the Tzar diverted
his mind to the consideration of a more pleasing matter. His second
wife Mariya had died in 1569, and he had for some time contemplated
a renewal of the marriage state. The present seemed to him a good
opportunity for carrying out his project, and the usual preliminaries
were set in motion. The selection of a mate for the Russian Gosoudars
was conducted on a thoroughly democratic principle, and any young
woman of healthy and pleasing appearance might aspire to the honour of
becoming Tzaritza. On this occasion over 2000 of the likeliest maidens
of Moskovy were brought to the Aleksandrovskie Sloboda, and the Court
doctors and midwives helped the monarch to make his choice, which fell
upon a young girl of Novgorod, Martha Sobakin. Either the work of
selection was badly done, or the Tzar was particularly unfortunate,
or the bride met with foul play, for she died before the marriage
ceremonies were well through. Needless to state the thwarted widower
inclined to the last alternative, and several persons were put to death
on suspicion. The proverb “one funeral makes many” certainly applies
to the decease of a Tzaritza in sixteenth-century Moskva. A batch of
boyarins and voevodas were ordered to execution the same winter (1571),
on the charge of having been in league with the Tartars, and doubtless
some such suspicion was a deciding factor in Ivan’s supine flight
before the invaders. Some were impaled, others knouted to death, others
poisoned.[165]
Whether this sanguinary example had the effect of encouraging “_les
autres_,” or whether the damage sustained by Moskva from the Tartar
brands stung the Russians to exceptional effort, a renewal of the
invasion by the Khan met with a determined and successful opposition.
[Sidenote: Aug. 1572] An enormous army of Krim and Nogai Tartars,
reinforced by troops of Yeni-Tscheri and other Turkish soldiers,
pushed across the Oka, but was encountered and decisively defeated
by a Moskovite force of inferior numbers, under the command of Kniaz
Vorotinski and Ivan Sheremetiev. The slaughter was heavy and the issue
of the day swept away all question of withdrawal from Astrakhan, and
gave Moskovy a long immunity from trouble with the steppe-folk. Ivan,
who, while the attack threatened, had been seized with a desire to
visit the northern districts of his dominions, returned from Novgorod
to share in the general rejoicing. In the early part of the year he
had scandalised and embarrassed the heads of the Church by taking unto
himself a fourth wife, Anna Koltovskoi; after having accomplished
this breach of the Church’s law he still further disturbed the
spiritual fathers by announcing his sin to the Synod then sitting
for the election of a Metropolitan in the place of Kirill, deceased,
and demanding absolution. The Vladuikas, torn between love for their
precious dogmas and a natural and earnest desire to fall in with
the Tzar’s wishes, yielded finally to the stronger sentiment and
hallowed the union. In order to prevent other less privileged persons
from imitating the Tzar’s example, they hastened to “menace with a
fulminating anathema those who should dare to enter into a fourth
marriage.” Antonie, Archbishop of Polotzk, was elected Metropolitan.
While Moskva was yet quaking in anticipation of another visit from
Devlet-Girei, an anxiously awaited event had taken place in the
grand-duchy of Lit’uania. [Sidenote: 1570] At Knyszyn, near Grodno,
on the 7th July, had passed away the amiable Sigismund-August, “last
of the Yagiellos.” Instantly the states composing the Polish kingdom
were plunged into the modified anarchy of an interregnum, and various
aspirants to the kingly title, starting suddenly into the foreground,
added to the general confusion. The internal differences which
complicated the election of a successor to the defunct monarch were
succinctly stated in the correspondence of a French diplomat, who
informed his Court “there are four sorts of discords and different
principles which greatly retard the election, which are: of the
Lit’uanians with the Poles, of Great Poland with Little Poland,
of the barons with the rest of the nobility, and of the Catholics
with the Protestants.”[166] The faction of the Szlachta, or small
landowners, was more or less identical with the Great-Poland party,
while Little Poland was the stronghold of the higher magnates; this
line of demarcation was further accentuated by the personal rivalry
of Uchanski, Archbishop of Gniezno, who led the former party, and
Firley, Grand Marshal of the realm, who headed the other. Add to this
the fact that the Protestants were divided into more or less hostile
camps of Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists, and a fair idea will
be gathered of the field wherein the agents of the several candidates
were to ply their arts. Of the princes who placed themselves, or
were placed, in competition for the throne of the Yagiellos, the one
whose claims stood forth most prominently was the Austrian Archduke
Ernst, second son of the Emperor (Maximilian II.). The Habsburgs, who
had already absorbed Bohemia and were almost as firmly established
in that part of Hungary which was not occupied by the Turks, had on
every possible occasion contracted matrimonial alliances with the
Polish royal House, and hoped to add the Lekh kingdom to their family
dominions. The candidature of the Archduke was backed by the imperial
influence and had, moreover, the support of the Papacy, whose agent,
Cardinal Commendone, was working to secure his election. On the other
hand there were considerations which made his success by no means a
foregone conclusion; the great body of the Protestants would unite in
objecting to a monarch whose family traditions were bound up with Roman
Catholic supremacy, and many of the Poles were apprehensive that an
Austrian connection would involve them in a war with Turkey, a thing
they were particularly anxious to avoid. Above all, he personified
German intrusion, an element naturally distasteful to the Polish
national spirit. The same dread of a foreign war which weakened the
chances of the Archduke was the strongest factor, especially with
the Lit’uanians, in advancing the Moskovite candidature. The term of
truce had nearly run out and Ivan had clearly let it be understood
that an unfriendly election would mean renewal of war. That the Tzar,
as sovereign, might be a worse affliction than as a hostile neighbour
was a contingency partly provided for by the jealous restrictions of
the _Pacta conventa_, which he would be required to sign preliminary
to his coronation. The idea of the Moskovite party in Lit’uania was,
however, to elect the weak and more easily handled Thedor, Ivan’s
second son, rather than the father. None of the Protestant princes
who put themselves forward--John, King of Sweden (brother-in-law of
the late Sigismund-August), Stefan Batory, Voevoda of Transylvania,
and the young Duke Albrecht-Freidrich of Prussia--were strong enough
to command the confidence even of their co-religionists. A further
candidate there was, however, from an unexpected quarter. Henri de
Valois, Duke of Anjou, brother to his Most Christian Majesty of France,
and favourite son of Catherine de Medici, was a young gentleman who was
casting about in various directions for an opening suitable for the
development of his ambitions, and whose relations and acquaintances
were exceedingly desirous to see him settled. Charles IX. was anxious
to have this too brilliant brother removed to any sphere other than
the kingdom of France, already in a sufficiently electric condition, a
wish which was shared by Coligny and the Huguenots; while Catherine
nursed the proud hope of seeing all her sons decorated with the kingly
title. Monsieur himself was least enamoured of the project. From
the Polish point of view he made an ideal candidate; belonging to a
powerful House, which was neither German nor Moskovite, he was strong
without being dangerous, and the good understanding which existed
between the Louvre and the Porte would be an excellent guarantee for
immunity from Turkish aggression. Nor was the Catholic bias of the
Valois an insuperable obstacle to his election. The Prince who hunted
Huguenots with such apparent zeal had in his boyhood dallied with the
principles of the Reformation, and in later life seriously considered
the project of placing himself at the head of the Protestants of the
Low Countries.[167] He was in fact a thorough opportunist, and would
probably hold, like his namesake of Navarre, in similar though reversed
circumstances, that a kingdom outweighed the significance of a mass.
His interests were actively pushed by the ambassador dispatched from
France for that purpose, Jean de Montluc, Bishop of Valence, and the
hesitancy of the Emperor and uncompromising attitude of the Tzar
smoothed the way for his election. The news of the “happy and holy
enterprise,” which had been carried to a successful conclusion in
the streets of Paris in the small hours of the 24th August, was not
received in Poland with the same complacency with which it was hailed
at Rome, and the French candidature received a severe check. For months
the name of the Duke of Anjou was in evil odour among the electors,
and the sleepless efforts of Montluc were directed to the task of
whitewashing his employer from the red stain of S. Bartholomew. The
long-drawn-out proceedings which delayed the Diet of election, and
which gave Poland an entirely new constitution, altering the whole
course of her history, also gave time for the feeling against the
Valois to die down; the French agents made good use of the respite and
the Anjou cause steadily gained fresh adherents, till on the eve of
the election scarcely any other candidate was seriously considered.
[Sidenote: 1573] Thus it came to pass that, by an irony of fate, the
stormy sittings of the Diet of Warszawa, which lasted for the greater
part of April and May, resulted in bestowing the Polish crown on the
prince who, of all the competitors, least coveted it. And in fact
the hotly-contested prize, as it came out of the long interregnum,
was scarcely a brilliant possession; “it was not the heritage of the
Yagellos intact that the Bishop of Valence would have to take back to
the brother of Charles IX., but a crown despoiled of a part of its
privileges, and, under the title of king, nothing in truth more than
the life-presidency of a republic.”[168] The terms of the celebrated
_Pacta conventa_, to which every succeeding king would be required
to give his adhesion, were, among others, that the king should have
no voice in the election of a successor; must respect the religious
liberty of the Dissidents; must neither undertake a war nor impose
taxes without consent of Diet; nor marry nor divorce a wife without the
same sanction; and that no foreigners should hold any public office.
A throne pent in with such conditions would scarcely be attractive
in the eyes of the tyrant of Moskva, and Ivan seems to have used his
influence less to promote the candidature of himself or his son than
to secure the election of the Austrian Archduke. That he should be
anxious to have the Empire for a near neighbour might appear strange;
his real concern was lest a good understanding between a Franco-Polish
King and the Sultan should lead to his own undoing. It was perhaps,
however, an indirect effect of the influences of the free election
on the banks of the Vistula that led the Tzar to disband his feared
and hated Opritchniks (1572). While the Poles were yet in the throes
of settling the procedure of their Congress, Ivan took advantage of
the settled state of affairs in his own dominions and the embarrassed
condition of his neighbours to make a further attack on the Swedish
garrisons in Estland. With an army of 80,000 men he burst into a land
whose inhabitants were complacently engaged in celebrating the festival
of Christmas week, and changed the scenes of carol and carousal into
those of litany and desolation. Wittenstein was captured after a
brief resistance, during which the Tzar’s abiding favourite, Maluta
Skouratov, lost his life. His fall was avenged, according to the
Livlandish chronicles, by a holocaust of the prisoners, Swedes and
Germans, who were burned alive on a pile of faggots.[169] A fit and
seemly deed, if true, for the man who had exchanged with the Emperor
Maximilian sentiments of pious horror at the affair of S. Bartholomew.
Further Moskovite successes, and one of those wordy correspondences in
which the Tzar revelled, were followed by a curious truce with Sweden,
to run for two years (July 1575 to July 1577), and limited in scope as
well as in duration, since it was only to effect a suspension of arms
between the neighbouring provinces of Novgorod and Finland. Estland
was still to be disputed at the sword’s point. For mysterious reasons
of his own--possibly to lull German and Danish susceptibilities--Ivan
continued to place Magnus of Holstein, his vassal “King,” in the
forefront of his Baltic policy, and the unwilling Princeling was
carried off to Moskva to be solemnly wedded to Mariya, daughter of
Vladimir Andreivitch. Having made her an orphan the Tzar might well
think it incumbent on him to provide her with a husband, but Magnus
was scarcely overjoyed with a dowry of some inconsiderable presents
and the government of the township of Karkus--to which dimensions his
kingdom had shrunk. [Sidenote: 1575-6] The campaign in the Baltic
debatable lands resulted in a further strengthening of the Russian
foothold in that quarter; Pernau was stormed and taken with a loss of
7000 men; Helmet, Ermes, and other places in Livland surrendered to
Ivan’s voevodas, and the stronghold of Habsal, in Estland, fell into
their hands. From his western neighbours the Tzar had met with no
opposition in his sea-ward course; the Poles, after the prolonged and
elaborate labours of their king-choosing, had been again confronted,
under extraordinary circumstances, with the dangers and difficulties of
an interregnum. Never more than half reconciled to the eastern exile
which his restricted Polish sovereignty entailed, Henri de Valois
no sooner heard that he had succeeded to the crown of S. Louis (his
brother had died on the 30th May 1574) than he fled precipitately
from the kingdom over which he had reigned for barely seven months.
Once more the shadow of the Habsburg loomed over the land, and there
seemed indeed no suitable candidate with which to oppose the Austrian
nomination. The Papal, Imperial, and Moskovite influence, as well as
that of the Archbishop of Gniezno and the principal senators, pointed
in the same direction; the Szlachta alone held out against the Archduke
and his father. The Habsburg hopes were destined, however, to be again
falsified, and a new rival sprang up against them in Stefan Batory,
Voevoda of Transylvania. This vigorous prince, whose high qualities had
secured him his sovereignty on the death of the last of the Zapolya
dynasty, speedily became the favoured choice of the Szlachta and
Dissident party, and, as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, his election
would guarantee the Poles from Turkish hostility. On the other hand
they were threatened with the Tzar’s displeasure if they did not elect
either Maximilian or his son, the Archduke. To the Poles, if not to
the Lit’uanians, the Moskovite was a lesser bugbear than the Turk,
and the popular vote was for Batory. The Archbishop and the Senate
adhered to the Austrian cause, and the Diet (held at Warszawa, December
1575) resulted in a double election. The battle was not necessarily
to the strong, but the race was undoubtedly to the swift; in April of
the following year the dilatory Habsburg wrote to inform his brother
of Moskva that “we, in December last, with great glory and honour,
were elected to the kingdom of Poland and grand duchy of Lit’uania.”
Ivan replied to Maximilian that he congratulated him on his election,
but had since learned that Stefan Batory was at Krakow, crowned, and
married to the Princess Anne Yagiello (sister of Sigismund-August).
Stefan had shown as much hurry to arrive in his kingdom as Henri had
displayed in escaping from it, and his accession was an accomplished
fact; the death of the Emperor in the ensuing October removed the
chance of a civil contest. [Sidenote: 1576] The new King, though
brought up under Catholic influences, was supposed at the time of his
candidature to be of the Protestant communion; he adapted his religion,
however, to harmonise with that of the majority of his subjects, and of
the wife whom it was politically expedient he should marry, and during
his reign was the protector of the Jesuit party in Poland.[170] To Ivan
and to Russia his elevation boded trouble, and the Tzar appears to
have realised the danger and to have taken a bold but well-considered
step to meet it. While Stefan was engaged in breaking down the armed
resistance of the burghers of Dantzig, who would have none of him,
the forces of Moskovy were sent in overwhelming strength into the
Baltic provinces, and stronghold after stronghold wrested from Swede
and Pole alike. Even the Holsteiner and German troops were treated as
enemies--Duke Magnus was in temporary disgrace--and the country-folk
were in some instances punished with brutal severity, flogged, burned
alive, and in other ways made to suffer for the obstinate resistance of
a foreign garrison. As a display of armed strength and resolution the
campaign would have been valuable had it been followed up by a demand
for a definite peace with Poland, coupled with a threat of immediate
invasion of that country. Ivan had sufficient troops at his disposal
to have overrun Kourland and parts of Lit’uania and to have forced
peace or an unseasonable war upon Stefan. Instead of which, after
having roused against himself the enmity of all the interests involved
in the mastership of the disputed provinces--Swede, Pole, Dane, and
German--he suspended hostilities and returned to Moskva, there to renew
the bloody process by which he periodically thinned out his circle
of boyarins and courtiers. [Sidenote: 1577] Mikhail Vorotinski, the
conqueror of Devlet-Girei, and one of the most illustrious of the
Russian voevodas, was tortured nigh unto death on a charge of sorcery,
and died while being conveyed to Bielozero. Leonidas, successor to
Pimen in the archiepiscopate of Novgorod, was sewn up in a bear-skin
and worried to death by hounds. Other noted Moskovites were executed
in various manners at the same period. While the Tzar’s seemingly
blind rage was striking down some of his most capable voevodas, his
adversary was straining every nerve to ensure success in the coming
struggle. Drawing as exhaustively as was prudent on the resources
of his kingdom and grand duchy, Stefan at the same time applied for
external support in many directions; from Transylvania came troops,
from Brandenburg cannon, from Sweden active co-operation, while the
Pope and Sultan individually blessed the enterprise. In August 1579 the
storm burst; the King, having formally declared war on Ivan, marched
upon Polotzk, and the decisive moment had arrived when it would be seen
whether the new-grown Russian gosoudarstvo would be able to maintain
its high-water mark of western expansion, or whether all it had gained
during the embarrassments and weakness of its neighbours would be lost
at the first recoil. The composite army of Stefan probably consisted
of better fighting material than any the Tzar could send against him,
but the advantage of numbers and resources lay overwhelmingly with the
Moskovite. Allowing for the large detachment which it was necessary
to keep in the neighbourhood of the Oka to guard the capital from a
possible Tartar attack, Ivan had still sufficient forces wherewith
to have returned again and again to the relief of Polotzk, and to
have extended the war at the same time into undefended parts of
Lit’uania and Polish Livland. This plan was indeed partially put into
operation; 20,000 Asiatic horsemen were dispatched into Kourland,
and reinforcements were sent to the Russian garrisons in Livland and
Ingermanland (which was threatened by the Swedes). But the scheme of
campaign stopped short at this point; the constitutional timidity of
Moskovite war policy asserted itself, and Ivan remained with the bulk
of his army in deplorable inactivity at Pskov, while Polotzk and the
neighbouring stronghold of Sokol, bravely defended but perseveringly
attacked, fell into the hands of the invader. The harrying of the
provinces of Sieversk and Smolensk wound up the Polish campaign for the
year. Accustomed to winter warfare, the light troops of Moskovy might
have taken advantage of the cold season to have inflicted retributive
damage on their enemies, but the Tzar, thoroughly alarmed at the
military vigour of this upstart opponent, wasted his opportunity in
fruitless negotiations and in soft answers which failed to turn away
wrath. Stefan, having allayed the grumblings of his barely tractable
subjects, marched in the ensuing summer against Velikie-Louki, which,
after a spirited defence, was carried on the 5th September. [Sidenote:
1580] Throughout the winter the war continued in the Baltic lands,
where Poles, Swedes, and Danes--Magnus had early thrown off his
allegiance to Moskva--captured several places from the Russians. Ivan,
who had retired to the gloomy sanctuary of his beloved Aleksandrov,
continued his proposals for peace in a correspondence with Stefan,
which gradually assumed an angrier tone. “Man of blood!” breaks forth
this astonishing letter-writer, “remember that there is a God.”
Amid the troubles pressing upon him from without, the sovereign still
found time for marrying and giving in marriage. [Sidenote: (1575)] The
bride for whose espousal he had obtained the dispensation of the Church
had proved sterile, at least she had not increased his family, and
she was, like his father’s first wife, dispatched to a convent, while
another Anna replaced her; on this occasion the episcopal blessing was
not asked for. [Sidenote: 1580] Now, while the flames of disastrous
war were blazing over the lands which a century of patient effort had
reclaimed from the west, Ivan celebrated at Aleksandrov his nuptials
with Mariya, daughter of the boyarin Thedor Nagoi, and those of his
second son, Thedor, with Irena, sister of the voevoda Boris Godounov.
The insatiate Stefan continued to employ both pen and sword against his
hard-pressed adversary. In a letter rejecting Ivan’s renewed offers of
peace, with which he prefaced a new campaign, he taunted the Tzar with
his ill-sitting correctitude; “You reproach me with having mutilated
the dead; it is false, but certain is it that you torture the living.”
Entering thoroughly into the style and spirit of Ivan’s controversial
essays, he further recommended him to re-read the fiftieth Psalm in
order to acquaint himself with the duty of a Christian. The Tzar had
found his match.
[Sidenote: 1581]
As in the two preceding years, the month of August brought with it
Batory, thundering his cannon this time against the walls of Pskov.
The reputation of the great captain had drawn to him warriors from
many lands, and the white-eagle standard flapped in the van of an
army, 100,000 strong, mustering in its ranks Poles, Letts, Magyars,
Austrians, Kourlanders, Prussians, Lubeckers, Danes, and Scots. The
ancient city on the Peipus shore, which for many a stormy hundred years
had been a bulwark of the Russian land against the aggressions of the
west folk, opposed a heroic resistance to the mighty efforts which were
made for its subjection, and the flood of Polish conquest received a
timely check. The stupor of fear and helplessness which seemed to have
settled down on the Tzar and his voevodas neutralised to a great extent
the effect of this stubborn defence; the Swedes captured Habsal, Narva,
and other places of less importance in Estland, and later, led by de la
Gardie, one of those brilliant soldiers with whom France periodically
fascinated the world, penetrated into Russian territory and took
Ivangorod, Yam, and Kopor’e. [Sidenote: Jan. 1582] Soon after these
disasters Ivan effected a ten years’ truce with Batory, a composition
being brought about largely by the diplomatic efforts of Pope Gregory
XIII., who was fascinated, as many an astute Pontiff had been, with
the prospect of alluring Russia into the Catholic fold. The terms of
the truce were ruinously disadvantageous to the gosoudarstvo, and Ivan
could scarcely have been forced to sacrifice more if he had staked and
lost a series of pitched battles against his foe. Velikie-Louki was
restored to him, but Polotzk remained in the hands of the victors, and
Livland, snatched piecemeal from the Teutonic knights and contested
inch by inch for a quarter of a century, was yielded at one wrench
to Poland. The patient and persistent efforts of a long reign, the
dogged struggle towards the shores of the Baltic and free intercourse
with Western Europe, were relinquished as the price of a temporary and
uncertain peace, and the Moskovite Empire was thrown back upon itself,
like a conquered Titan thrust down into his chasm. And in another
direction Ivan had with his own hand fatally shattered, in a fit of
unrestrained passion, the dynastic hopes and strivings which had been
advanced and safeguarded with such ruthless severities. Side by side
with the gloomy Tzar in his later years, partaker of his amusements
and debauches, sharer of his labours of State, had grown up the young
Ivan Ivanovitch, designed to carry on the holy line of Moskva when his
father should be no more. And in one respect at least he had shown
himself an apt pupil; he had already married three wives “without
having been a widower.”[171] It was no part of the Moskovite theory of
government that the Princes of the Blood should expose their sacred
persons in the forefront of their country’s battles, and the young
Ivan does not appear to have departed from the prevailing custom of
passive aloofness; the humiliations and losses which the Russian State
was suffering at the hands of Batory stung the Tzarevitch, however,
into a desire to show a bolder front to the oppressor, and he requested
his father to let him lead an army to the relief of Pskov, then the
centre-point of the Polish attack. A natural and proper request, under
the circumstances, but to the suspicion-haunted old Tzar, on that fatal
November day, it was the bursting-in of the dreaded summons, “the
younger generation knocking at the door.” Wildly he accused his son
of desiring to supplant him, wildly struck at him with his terrible
iron-tipped staff; Boris Godounov, rushing in to save the Tzarevitch,
received most of the blows, but one had crashed upon the youth’s head,
which would never now wear the crown of all the Russias. The heavy
thuds suddenly ceased and a wail of anguish rang through the silent
palace: “Unhappy me, I have killed my son!” The terrified attendants,
rushing into the chamber, found the wretched father weeping over the
body of the dying Tzarevitch. In one moment of blind fury the primeval
ape-instinct had leaped forth and had destroyed the weaving and toiling
of a lifetime of specialised effort. Ivan Ivanovitch died a few days
later (19th November 1581) from the effects of the blow, and Greek
monks at Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria chanted
subsidised prayers for the repose of his soul. As in the preceding
generation, the next heir (Thedor)[172] was a weakling, and the Tzar’s
mad act had opened up the possibility of his throne passing to one of
the boyarin families upon whose repression so much savage ingenuity had
been expended. The dreary outlook with which the old man was confronted
may have largely influenced his supine surrender to Polish demands,
and the equally humiliating truce with Sweden, effected a year later,
by the terms of which not only Estland, but Narva, Ivangorod, Yam,
and Kopor’e were left in the possession of the victors. [Sidenote:
1583] Moskovy was still further shut in from the sea, and the Peipus,
which had been a Russian lake, became a natural barrier between three
converging monarchies. One ray of success and aggrandisement pierced
through the miasma gloom that shrouded the Moskovite land and gathered
thickest around the tzarskie palace. In the last quarter of a century
which had witnessed the opening up of far scarce-dreamt-of regions
by daring European explorers, the century of Cortez and Pizarro, of
the bold sea-captains who shed lustre on “the spacious days of great
Elizabeth,” the Russian Tzarstvo was swollen by the haphazard conquest
of the vast Sibirian “province;” a province which “comprises about a
thirteenth part of the globe, and is almost 3,000,000 square miles
larger than the whole of Russia in Europe, including both Poland and
Finland.”[173] Nor was this huge region of the north, this “land of
the long nights,” as the Chinese had called it in the remote past of
their history, a barren and unprofitable possession; mines of salt,
copper, and silver, forests stocked with valuable fur-bearing animals,
and watered by navigable rivers and large fish-yielding lakes, and
in some districts tracts of fertile arable land, compensate for the
awful desolation which spreads over the greater part of it during
the long winter. For many centuries the Russians had tapped at the
outer fringe of this unexplored wilderness, and the enterprising folk
of Novgorod had brought some of its produce into their markets; the
later Grand Princes had put forward claims to a shadowy sovereignty
over the principality or khanate of Sibir (a town on the Irtuish), and
Ivan himself had kept an eye on this _ultima Thule_ of the Moskovite
forests. The Stroganovs, descendants of a merchant family of Tartar
extraction who had settled in the oblast of Perm, were granted powers
of administration over as much territory as they could reclaim from
the tribes on their frontier, and a system of patient pioneering was
carried on for some twenty years. The happy idea of utilising the
restless military energies of the Don Kozaks, who were a scourge alike
to their Tartar and Russian neighbours, in more thoroughly exploiting
the Sibirian country, occurred to the administrators of the Moskovite
outpost; an invitation was sent to a band of these freebooters, who
had made their own country too hot to hold them, to turn their weapons
against the “infidels” who were resisting the encroachments of the
White-Russian traders. [Sidenote: 1579] The Kozaks, headed by a
chief named Ermak, responded readily to an offer which promised them
full indulgence of their fighting and marauding instincts, with the
additional advantage of official sanction. They were outlaws most of
them, and would have been put to lingering deaths if they had strayed
into the clutches of Moskva, and the Tzar was highly scandalised at
their employment in his service; he showed himself, however, to be
of a forgiving disposition when, with a few hundred followers, the
intrepid Ermak had conquered for him the vast north-eastern province.
[Sidenote: 1581] The Kozak chief, still struggling to hold and extend
the territories he had won, received as a mark of Ivan’s approval a
cuirass which had once adorned the monarch’s person. As if symbolical
of the ruin which so often attended the Tzar’s favour, the present was
the contributing cause of Ermak’s destruction; plunging one night into
the waters of the Irtuish, to escape from a surprise attack of his
enemies, the weight of the armour bore him down, and he sank in the icy
flood. Ivan’s reign had opened auspiciously with the conquest of Kazan
and Astrakhan; it closed with the acquisition of Sibiria, by which
Russia made her first giant stride into Asia.
[Sidenote: Oct. 1583]
Amid the state and domestic troubles which shadowed the Tzar’s old
age, and while he was endeavouring to bring about a marriage between
himself and one of the English aristocracy (Lady Mary Hastings), the
woman who was still his wife presented him with another Dimitri--a puny
princeling, born surely in an evil hour, whose ghost was to haunt the
land for many a woeful year. A few months later Ivan’s health began to
fail, and when, from the Red Staircase of the great palace at Moskva,
he observed a comet in the winter sky “of which the tail had the form
of a cross,” he beheld in it the presage of his death. Sickening
rapidly, he expired somewhat abruptly, while engaged in a game of chess
with one of his courtiers, on the 18th March 1584.
The great death-dealing Tzar was dead himself at last, the child
that had been so fervently prayed for had gone back, in the fulness
of his years, whence he had come. They tonsured the grim corpse that
frightened them still, and called it Jonah, in the name of the Kirillov
monastery; but they buried it as the Orthodox Tzar, Ivan Vasilievitch,
in the Cathedral of Mikhail the Archangel, amid the striking of the
great bells of the Kreml and the sobs and lamentations of the people.
Among Russian historians Ivan IV. has found apologists as well as
writers who have held him up to execration and condemned his statecraft
and his cruelties alike. Even while examining critically the evidence
against him on the latter score, the result arrived at is that he was
probably as “terrible” as he is painted. Chronicles and historical
accounts were still largely in ecclesiastical hands, and scant justice
would be done to the memory of a man who had married six or seven
wives. The Church might forgive his hates, but never his loves. Nor
can the evidence of Kourbski be accepted as unbiassed in the matter
of Ivan’s character. Other contemporary witnesses there are, however,
whose testimony points in the same direction, and who were in no way
interested in libelling the Tzar. Horsey, who was on terms of good
fellowship with him, wrote, “The Emperour liueth in feare, daily
discouers Treasons, and spends much time in torturing and execution.”
A Venetian attached to the Polish Embassy at Moskva in 1570 described
the Tzar as “the greatest tyrant who has ever existed,” and mentions
a delinquent voevoda being thrown to a savage bear, “kept for that
purpose.” The cruelties and oppressions practised by the Russian
monarch were widely commented on during both the Polish elections, and
the reports largely militated against his candidature. Finally the
document in the Kirillov monastery, in which the Tzar complacently
prays for the souls of 3470 of his victims, would, if authentic, show
that the extent at least of his executions has not been exaggerated.
Nor is this gloating savagery, blended as it was with a rational and
understandable policy, difficult to comprehend. Ivan the Terrible was
the outcome of a long line of Moskovite princes, men who had been
actuated by one ruling idea, which idea was in him so developed and
specialised that he was nothing short of a monomaniac. The idea was
that Moskovy, and God, and Gosoudar were scarcely distinguishable
entities, bound up in indissoluble bonds. With the substitution of
other countries, other sovereigns in other days have fallen into the
same confusion. Jealous, awe-inspiring, pain-inflicting, terrible--such
was the conception of a God among peoples in most parts of the world,
such was the character which came naturally to the holy, Orthodox,
Moskva-bred Tzar. The religious side of Ivan’s nature was always
prominent; his prostrations in the churches, his zeal in monastic
regulations, the pious reflections which formed so remarkable a part of
his correspondence, the solemn forebodings over Kourbski’s soul, were
all indications of a mind steeped in dogmatic belief.
Grim and dreary, mean and monstrous, as the Moskovy of this period
seems, with its Aleksandrovskie sloboda, its gibbets, axes,
impalements, and boiling cauldrons, its man-devouring hounds and
blood-splashed bear-dens, its Kromiesniki and dumb driven population,
its gutters running red and carp growing bloated on human flesh, and
above all, everywhere, those glittering crosses; yet not in Eastern
Europe alone could “such things be.” A brilliant writer, drawing his
materials from the history of mediæval Italy both before and after
the Renaissance, has “pictured the awful and beautiful forms of
those whom vice and blood and weariness had made monstrous or mad:
Filippo, Duke of Milan, who slew his wife, and painted her lips with
a scarlet poison that her lover might suck death from the dead thing
he fondled; ... Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase living
men, and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot who
had loved him; ... Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured only by
the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood as other
men have for red wine; ... Sigismondo Malatesta, ... the Lord of
Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man,
who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra
d’Este in a cup of emerald;”[174] ... these examples, garnered from
one corner of Western Europe, show that humanity and inhumanity are
sometimes convertible terms under sunny Italian skies, as well as amid
dark pine-forests and snow-piled wastes. The century which produced
the Moskovy of Ivan the Terrible was not barren of sinister deeds in
other parts of Christendom, and Russia was at least free, perhaps by
very reason of its stifling autocracy, from the horrors which attended
the great religious upheaval in the West; when Paris and the French
provinces were glutted with Huguenot blood; when Alva was dealing
out “confiscation, imprisonment, exile, torture, and death” to the
Protestants of the Netherlands; when the Calvinists of Geneva were
burning Servetus alive for “heresy” and roasting men and women to
death for “witchcraft”; when Calvin himself was suggesting to the Lord
Protector Somerset that both Catholics and Protestant sectaries “alike
well deserve to be repressed by the sword”; and when, in Northern
Germany, banishment and--in the case of the Chancellor Crell--the
scaffold were being employed by the Lutherans to stamp out Calvinism.
S. Solov’ev, E. A. Solov’ev, Polevoi, Schiemann, Karamzin, Pember.
FOOTNOTES:
[133] Schiemann.
[134] Moskva in the reign of Ivan IV. consisted of four principal
divisions--the twin centres of the Kreml and Kitai-gorod, the enclosing
crescent of the Biel-gorod or White-town, and the large outer husk
“enclosing the faubourgs, gardens, woods, lakes, and vast unbuilt-on
spaces.” Between the houses in the Kitai-gorod and the east wall of
the Kreml was the Red Place, or city square, which was the centre
of Moskovite public life; “red” in Russian being synonymous with
“beautiful.” Afterwards the name gained a grimmer significance.
[135] Herberstein.
[136] S. Solov’ev.
[137] E. A. Solov’ev, _Ivan IV. Groznie_.
[138] Karamzin. Schiemann. Austen Pember, _Ivan the Terrible_.
[139] E. A. Solov’ev.
[140] Anastasia Romanova, daughter of Roman, hence the name by which
the family was afterwards distinguished--Romanov.
[141] Karamzin.
[142] Rambaud.
[143] In Byzantine writings of that period it is sometimes styled “Sea
of the Russians.”
[144] Schiemann.
[145] Quoted by Schiemann.
[146] Schiemann.
[147] Schiemann; S. Solov’ev; _Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen_.
[148] E. A. Solov’ev, _Ivan IV. Groznie_.
[149] N. A. Polevoi, _Tzarstvovanie Ioanna Groznago_.
[150] According to Pember “christened Dmitri, like his first-born.”
Karamzin and Polevoi designate him _Vasili_.
[151] A. N. Murav’ev, _History of the Russian Church_.
[152] _Skasaniya kniazya Kourbskago_, edit. by N. Ustryalov; Karamzin.
[153] Pember.
[154] Schiemann, Karamzin, E. A. Solov’ev, Polevoi.
[155] Karamzin, S. Solov’ev.
[156] E. A. Solov’ev.
[157] E. A. Solov’ev, Polevoi, S. Solov’ev.
[158] Karamzin, E. A. Solov’ev.
[159] Karamzin.
[160] _Sir Ierome Horsey’s Observations in seventeene yeeres travels
and experience in Rvssia, and other countries adioyning._
[161] Karamzin, E. A. Solov’ev, Schiemann.
[162] Horsey.
[163] Schiemann, Karamzin.
[164] Giles Fletcher, the Elder, _Of the Russe Common Wealth_.
[165] Karamzin, Polevoi.
[166] Vulcob, French ambassador at Wien; quoted by the Marquis de
Noailles in _Henri de Valois et la Pologne en 1572_.
[167] De Noailles, _Henri de Valois_, etc.
[168] De Noailles.
[169] S. Solov’ev, Karamzin.
[170] W. R. Morfill, _Poland_.
[171] Karamzin.
[172] Pronounced Fedor; the Russian letter corresponding to the Greek
Theta in form has been rendered _Th_ (in the proper names Thedor,
Martha, etc.) to distinguish it from the Slavonic F, but it has the
same pronouncing value as the latter letter.
[173] Pember.
[174] Wilde, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_.