NOVGOROD THE GREAT.
Sitting at my window, gazing into space--in front of me that famous
tower of Yaroslav, from which once pealed the Vechie bell; and, lying
beyond this tower, the public square, the bridge, the Kremlin walls,
Sophia's golden domes, and that proud pedestal of the present reign,
which tells of a Russia counting already her thousand years of
political life--I fall a dreaming of the past, until the sceneries and
the people come and go in a procession; not of dead things, but of
quick and passionate men, alive with the energies of past and coming
times.
What were the shapes and meanings of that dream? A wide expanse of
wood and waste; forests of fir and silver-birch; with tarns and lakes
on which the wild fowl of the country feed their young; and by the
shores of which the shepherds and herdsmen watch their scanty flocks.
In the midst of this wood and water stands a low red wall of stone,
engirding a mass of cabins, with here and there a bigger cabin, from
the peak of which springs a cross. A river rolls beneath the wall, the
waters of which come from a dark and sombre lake. The space within the
wall is a kremlin, an inclosure, and in this kremlin dwell a band of
traders and craftsmen; holding their own, with watchful eye and ready
hand, like the lodgers in a Syrian khan, against wild and predatory
tribes. The life of these men is hard and mean; the air is bleak, the
soil unfruitful; and the marauders prowl forever at their gates.
A mist of time rolls up and hides the red stone wall and shingles from
my sight, and, when it clears away, a vast and shining city stands
exposed to view, with miles of street and garden, and an outer wall,
of sweep so vast that the eye can hardly take it in, with massive
gates and towers to defend these gates, of enormous strength. The
river is now alive with boats and rafts; the streets are thronged with
people, and a hundred domes and steeples glitter in the sun. The red
kremlin, not now used as a castle of defense, is covered with public
buildings; one a cathedral of gigantic size and surpassing beauty;
another, a palace with a garden, belted by a moat; the citadel in
which the traders nestled together for their common safety having now
become the seat of temporal and spiritual power. Long trains of horses
file through the city gates, bringing in the produce of a thousand
hamlets, which the merchants store in their magazines for export and
expose in their bazars for sale. These merchants bring their wares
from East and West, and send them in exchange to the farthest ports
and cities of the earth. Their town is a free town, to which men from
all nations come and go; a republic in the wilderness; a station of
the Hanseatic league, devoting itself to freedom, commerce, and the
liberal arts. The life of a great country flows into their streets and
squares; from which run out again the prosperous purple tides into the
unknown regions of ice and storm. Forth from her gates march out the
colonists of the North; the men of Kem and Holmogory; men who are
going forth to plant on the shores of the Arctic Sea the free
institutions under which they live at home. A prince, elected by the
people, serving while they list, sits in the chair of state, like a
Podesta in Italian towns; but the actual power is in the hands of the
Vetchie: a popular council, summoned by the ringing of a bell--the
great city bell--which swings in Yaroslav's Tower.
Now comes a change, which seems to be less a change in the outward
show than in the inner spirit of the place. The merchant has become a
boyar, the nobleman a prince. Pride of the eye, and lust of the heart,
are stamped upon every face. The rich are very rich; the poor are very
poor; and men in cloth of gold affront and trample on men in rags. The
streets--so spacious and so busy!--are disturbed by faction fights;
and the Vetchie bell is swinging day and night, as though some Tartar
horde were at the gates. The boyars have grown too rich for freedom,
and the ancients of the city sell their consciences for gold and
state. Deeming themselves the equals of kings, they give their city
not only the name of Great, but the name of Lord. On public documents
they ask--as if in mockery--Who can stand against God, and Novgorod
the Great?
Again falls the mist of time; and as it rolls away, the city, still as
vast, though not so busy as of yore, seems troubled in her splendor by
a sudden fear. The bell which tolls her citizens to council, seems
wild with pain, and men are hurrying to and fro along her streets;
none daring, as in olden days, to snatch down lance and sword, and
counsel his fellows to go forth and fight. For an enemy is nigh their
gates, whom they have much offended, without having virtue enough to
resist his arms. Ivan the Fourth, returning from a disastrous raid on
the Baltic seaboard, hears that in his absence from Moscow, the
citizens of Novgorod, hating his rule, have sent an embassy to the
Prince of Sweden, praying him to take them under his protection; and
in his fury the tyrant swears to destroy that city, and to sow the
site with salt. An army of Tartars and Kozaks is at the gates; an army
sullen from defeat and loss, and only to be rallied by an orgy of
drink and blood. Pale with terror, the citizens run to and fro; the
women shriek and swoon; and help for them is none, until Father
Nicolas, an ancient man, with flowing beard and saintly face, stands
forward in their midst. A wild creature; an Elisha the prophet, a John
the Baptist; he stands up in their meeting, naked from head to feet.
Such a man suits the times; and as he offers to go forth and save the
city from ruin, they gladly let him try. Nicolas marches forth, in his
nakedness, to denounce his prince in the midst of his ravenous hordes;
and when he comes into the camp, he walks up boldly to the Tsar. Ivan,
himself a fanatic, listens to this naked man with a patience which his
guards and ministers observe with wonder. "Bloodsucker and
unbeliever!" cries the hermit, "thou who art a devourer of Christian
flesh--listen to my words. If thou, or any of these thy servants,
touch a hair of a child's head in yon city--which God preserves for a
great purpose--then, I swear by the angel whom God has given unto me
to serve me, thou shalt surely die; die on the instant, by a flash
from heaven!" As he speaks, the sky grows dark, a storm springs up,
and rages through the tents. A pall comes down, and covers the earth.
"Spare me, fearful saint," shrieks the Tsar, "the city is forgiven;
and let me, in remembrance of this day, have thy constant prayers." On
these conditions Nicolas withdraws his curse; and Ivan, marching into
the city with his captives and his treasures, lodges in the Kremlin
and the palace, and kneeling before the shrine of St. Sophia, makes
himself gracious to the people for the hermit's sake.
Once more a mist comes down--a thin white veil, which passes like a
pout from an infant's face. The city is the same in size, in splendor,
in the fullness of her fearful life. The Tsar, who went away from her
gates low and humble, has come back, like a wild beast thirsting for
blood and prey. His army camps beyond the walls, and a whisper passes
through the city that the place is to be razed, the women given up to
the Tartars, while the men and boys are to be put without mercy to the
sword. The city razed! No fancy can take in the fact; for Novgorod is
one of the largest cities in Europe, a republic older than Florence, a
capital larger than London, a shrine more sacred than Kief. Her walls
measure fifty miles, her houses contain eight hundred thousand souls.
Yet Ivan has doomed her to the dust. Telling off ten thousand gunners
of his guard, and thirty thousand Tartars from the steppe, he gives up
the republic to their lust, bidding them sack and burn, and spare
neither man nor maid. They rush upon the gates; they scale the wall;
they seize the bridge, the Kremlin, the cathedral; and they make
themselves masters of the city, quarter by quarter and street by
street. No pen will paint the horrors of that sack. The wines are
drunk, the people butchered, the houses fired. Day by day, and week
after week, the club, the musket, and the torch are in constant use.
The streets run blood, the river is choked with bodies of the slain.
When the work of slaughter stops, and the Tartars are recalled into
their camp, the tale of murdered men, women, and children is found to
be greater than the population of Petersburg in the present day. The
desolation is Oriental and complete.
The city bell--the bell of council and of prayer--is taken down from
Yaroslav's Tower and sent to Moscow, where it hangs beside the Holy
Gate--an exile from the city it roused to arms, and haply speaking to
some burgher's ear and student's heart of a time when Russian cities
were equal to those of Italy and England, and her people were as free
as those of Germany and France!