one of shame and anarchy. The shame was that of slavish submission to
the Tartar khan. Each prince, in succession, fell on his knees before
this high dignitary of the barbarians and begged or bought his throne.
The anarchy was that of the Russian princes, on which the khan looked
with winking eyes, thinking that the more they weakened themselves the
more they would strengthen him. The rulers of Moscow, Tver, Vladimir,
and Novgorod fought almost incessantly for supremacy, crushing their
people beneath the feet of their ambition, now one, now another, gaining
the upper hand.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF MOSCOW.]
In the end the princes of Moscow became supreme. They grew rich, and
were able to keep up a regular army, that chief tool of despotism. The
crown lands alone gave them dominion over three hundred thousand
subjects. The time was coming in which they would be the absolute rulers
of all Russia. But before this could be accomplished the power of the
khans must be broken, and the first step towards this was taken by the
great Dmitri Donskoi, who became grand prince of Moscow in 1362.
Dmitri came to the throne at a fortunate epoch. The Golden Horde was
breaking to pieces. There were several khans, at war with one another,
and discord ruled among the overlords of Russia. Still greater discord
reigned in Russia itself. For eighteen years Dmitri was kept busy in
wars with the princes of Tver, Kief, and Lithuania. Terrible was the war
with Tver. Four times he overcame Michael, its prince. Four times did
Michael, aided by the prince of Lithuania, gain the victory. During this
obstinate conflict Moscow was twice besieged. Only its stone walls,
lately built, saved it from capture and ruin. At length Olguerd, the
fiery prince of Lithuania, died, and Tver yielded. Moscow became
paramount among the Russian principalities.
And now Dmitri, with all Russia as his realm, dared to defy the terrible
Tartars. For more than a century no Russian prince had ventured to
appear before the khan of the Golden Horde except on his knees. Dmitri
had thus humbled himself only three years before. Now, inflated with his
new power, he refused to pay tribute to the khan, and went so far as to
put to death the Tartar envoy, who insolently demanded the accustomed
payment.
Dmitri had burned his bridges behind him. He had flung down the gage of
war to the Tartars, and would soon feel their hand in all its dreaded
strength. The khan, on hearing of the murder of his ambassador, burst
into a terrible rage. The civil wars which divided the Golden Horde had
for the time ceased, and Mamai, the khan, gathered all the power of the
Horde and marched on defiant Moscow, vowing to sweep that rebel city
from the face of the earth.
The Russians did not wait his coming. All dissensions ceased in the
face of the impending peril, all the princes sent aid, and Dmitri
marched to the Don at the head of an army of two hundred thousand men.
Here he found the redoubtable Mamai with three times that number of the
fierce Tartar horsemen in his train.
"Yonder lies the foe," said Dmitri to his princely associates. "Here
runs the Don. Shall we await him here, or cross and meet him with the
river at our backs?"
"Let us cross," was the unanimous verdict. "Let us be first in the
assault."
At once the order was given, and the battalions marched on board the
boats and were ferried across the stream, at a short distance from the
opposite bank of which the enemy lay. No sooner had they landed than
Dmitri ordered all the boats to be cast adrift. It was to be victory or
death; no hope of escape by flight was left; but well he knew that the
men would fight with double valor under such desperate straits.
The battle began. On the serried Russian ranks the Tartars poured in
that impetuous assault which had so often carried their hosts to
victory. The Russians defended themselves with fiery valor, assault
after assault was repulsed, and so fiercely was the field contested that
multitudes of the fallen were trampled to death beneath the horses'
feet. At length, however, numbers began to tell. The Russians grew weary
from the closeness of the conflict. The vast host of the Tartars enabled
them to replace with fresh troops all that were worn in the fight.
Victory seemed about to perch upon their banners.
Dismay crept into the Russian ranks. They would have broken in flight,
but no avenue of escape was left. The river ran behind them, unruffled
by a boat. Flight meant death by drowning; fight meant death by the
sword. Of the two the latter seemed best, for the Russians firmly
believed that death at the hands of the infidels meant an immediate
transport to the heavenly mansions of bliss.
At this critical moment, when the host of Dmitri was wavering between
panic and courage, the men ready to drop their swords through sheer
fatigue, an unlooked-for diversion inspired their shrinking souls. The
grand prince had stationed a detachment of his army as a reserve, and
these, as yet, had taken no part in the battle. Now, fresh and furious,
they were brought up, and fell vigorously upon the rear of the Tartars,
who, filled with sudden terror, thought that a new army had come to the
aid of the old. A moment later they broke and fled, pursued by their
triumphant foes, and falling fast as they hurried in panic fear from the
encrimsoned field.
Something like amazement filled the souls of the Russians as they saw
their dreaded enemies in flight. Such a consummation they had scarcely
dared hope for, accustomed as they had been for a century to crouch
before this dreadful foe. They had bought their victory dearly. Their
dead strewed the ground by thousands. Yet to be victorious over the
Tartar host seemed to them an ample recompense for an even greater loss
than that sustained. Eight days were occupied by the survivors in
burying the slain. As for the Tartar dead, they were left to fester on
the field. Such was the great victory of the Don, from which Dmitri
gained his honorable surname of Donskoi. He died nine years afterwards
(1389), having won the high honor of being the first to vanquish the
terrible horsemen of the Steppes, firmly founded the authority of the
grand princes, and made Moscow the paramount power in Russia.
_IVAN, THE FIRST OF THE CZARS._
The victory of the Don did not free Russia from the Tartar yoke. Two
years afterwards the principality of Moscow was overrun and ravaged by a
lieutenant of the mighty Tamerlane, the all-conquering successor of
Genghis Khan. Several times Moscow was taken and burned. Full seventy
years later, at the court of the Golden Horde, two Russian princes might
have been seen disputing before the great khan the possession of the
grand principality and tremblingly awaiting his decision. Nevertheless,
the battle of the Don had sounded the knell of the Tartar power. Anarchy
continued to prevail in the Golden Horde. The power of the grand princes
of Moscow steadily grew. The khans themselves played into the hands of
their foes. Russia was slowly but surely casting off her fetters, and
deliverance was at hand.
Ivan III., great-grandson of Dmitri Donskoi, ascended the throne in
1462, nearly two centuries and a half after the Tartar invasion. During
all that period Russia had been the vassal of the khans. Only now was
its freedom to come. It was by craft, more than by war, that Ivan won.
In the field he was a dastard, but in subtlety and perfidy he surpassed
all other men of his time, and his insidious but persistent policy
ended by making him the autocrat of all the Russias.
He found powerful enemies outside his dominions,--the Tartars, the
Lithuanians, and the Poles. He succeeded in defeating them all. He had
powerful rivals within the domain of Russia. These also he overcame. He
made Moscow all-powerful, imitated the tyranny of the Tartars, and
founded the autocratic rule of the czars which has ever since prevailed.
The story of the fall of the Golden Horde may be briefly told. It was
the work of the Russian army, but not of the Russian prince. In 1469,
after collecting a large army, Ivan halted and began negotiating. But
the army was not to be restrained. Disregarding the orders of their
general, they chose another leader, and assailed and captured Kasan, the
chief Tartar city. As for the army of the Golden Horde, it was twice
defeated by the Russian force. In 1480 a third invasion of the Tartars
took place, which resulted in the annihilation of their force.
The tale, as handed down to us, is a curious one. The army, full of
martial ardor, had advanced as far as the Oka to meet the Tartars; but
on the approach of the enemy Ivan, stricken with terror, deserted his
troops and took refuge in far-off Moscow. He even recalled his son, but
the brave boy refused to obey, saying that "he would rather die at his
post than follow the example of his father."
The murmurs of the people, the supplication of the priests, the
indignation of the boyars, forced him to return to the army, but he
returned only to cover it with shame and himself with disgrace. For
when the chill of the coming winter suddenly froze the river between the
two forces, offering the foe a firm pathway to battle, Ivan, in
consternation, ordered a retreat, which his haste converted into a
disorderly flight. Yet the army was two hundred thousand strong and had
not struck a blow.
Fortune and his allies saved the dastard monarch. For at this perilous
interval the khan of the Crimea, an ally of Russia, attacked the capital
of the Golden Horde and forced a hasty recall of its army; and during
its disorderly homeward march a host of Cossacks fell upon it with such
fury that it was totally destroyed. Russia, threatened with a new
subjection to the Tartars by the cowardice of its monarch, was finally
freed from these dreaded foes through the aid of her allies.
But the fruits of this harvest, sown by others, were reaped by the czar.
His people, who had been disgusted with his cowardice, now gave him
credit for the deepest craft and wisdom. All this had been prepared by
him, they said. His flight was a ruse, his pusillanimity was prudence;
he had made the Tartars their own destroyers, without risking the fate
of Russia in a battle; and what had just been condemned as dastard
baseness was now praised as undiluted wisdom.
Ivan would never have gained the title of Great from his deeds in war.
He won it, and with some justice, from his deeds in peace. He was great
in diplomacy, great in duplicity, great in that persistent pursuit of a
single object through which men rise to power and fame. This object, in
his case, was autocracy. It was his purpose to crush out the last shreds
of freedom from Russia, establish an empire on the pernicious pattern of
a Tartar khanate, which had so long been held up as an example before
Russian eyes, and make the Prince of Moscow as absolute as the Emperor
of China. He succeeded. During his reign freedom fled from Russia. It
has never since returned.
The story of how this great aim was accomplished is too long to be told
here, and the most important part of it must be left for our next tale.
It will suffice, at this point, to say that by astute policy and good
fortune Ivan added to his dominions nineteen thousand square miles of
territory and four millions of subjects, made himself supreme autocrat
and his voice the sole arbiter of fate, reduced the boyars and
subordinate princes to dependence on his throne, established a new and
improved system of administration in all the details of government, and
by his marriage with Sophia, the last princess of the Greek imperial
family,--driven by the Turks from Constantinople to Rome,--gained for
his standard the two-headed eagle, the symbol of autocracy, and for
himself the supreme title of czar.
_THE FALL OF NOVGOROD THE GREAT._
The Czar of Russia is the one political deity in Europe, the sole
absolute autocrat. More than a hundred millions of people have delivered
themselves over, fettered hand and foot, almost body and soul, to the
ownership of one man, without a voice in their own government, without
daring to speak, hardly daring to think, otherwise than he approves.
Thousands of them, millions of them, perhaps, are saying to-day, in the
words of Hamlet, "It is not and it cannot come to good; but break my
heart, for I must hold my tongue."
Who is this man, this god of a nation, that he should loom so high? Is
he a marvel of wisdom, virtue, and nobility, made by nature to wear the
purple, fashioned of porcelain clay, greater and better than all the
host to whom his word is the voice of fate? By no means; thousands of
his subjects tower far above him in virtue and ability, but,
puppet-like, the noblest and best of them must dance as he pulls the
strings, and hardly a man in Russia dares to say that his soul is his
own if the czar says otherwise.
Such a state of affairs is an anachronism in the nineteenth century, a
hideous relic of the barbarism and anarchy of mediaeval times. In
America, where every man is a czar, so far as the disposal of himself
is concerned, the enslavement of the Russians seems a frightful
disregard of the rights of man, the nation a giant Gulliver bound down
to the earth by chains of creed and custom, of bureaucracy and perverted
public opinion. Like Gulliver, it was bound when asleep, and it must
continue fettered while its intellect remains torpid. Some day it will
awake, stretch its mighty limbs, burst its feeble bonds, and hurl in
disarray to the earth the whole host of liliputian officials and
dignitaries who are strutting in the pride of ownership on its great
body, the czar tumbling first from his great estate.
This does not seem a proper beginning to a story from Russian history,
but, to quote from Shakespeare again, "Thereby hangs a tale." The
history of Russia has, in fact, been a strange one; it began as a
republic, it has ended as a despotism; and we cannot go on with our work
without attempting to show how this came about.
It was the Mongol invasion that enslaved Russia. Helped by the khans,
Moscow gradually rose to supremacy over all the other principalities,
trod them one by one under her feet, gained power by the aid of Tartar
swords and spears or through sheer dread of the Tartar name, and when
the Golden Horde was at length overthrown the Grand Prince took the
place of the Great Khan and ruled with the same absolute sway. It was
the absolutism of Asia imported into Europe. Step by step the princes of
Moscow had copied the system of the khan. This work was finished by Ivan
the Great, at once the deliverer and the enslaver of Russia, who freed
that country from the yoke of the khan, but laid upon it a heavier
burden of servility and shame.
Under the khan there had been insurrection. Under the czar there was
subjection. The latter state was worse than the former. The subjection
continues still, but the spirit of insurrection is again rising. The
time is coming in which the rule of that successor of the Tartar khan,
miscalled the czar, will end, and the people take into their own hands
the control of their bodies and souls.
There were republics in Russia even in Ivan's day, free cities which,
though governed by princes, maintained the republican institutions of
the past. Chief among these was Novgorod, that Novgorod the Great which
invited Rurik into Russia and under him became the germ of the vast
Russian empire. A free city then, a free city it continued. Rurik and
his descendants ruled by sufferance. Yaroslaf confirmed the free
institutions which Rurik had respected. For centuries this great
commercial city continued prosperous and free, becoming in time a member
of the powerful Hanseatic League. Only for the invasion of the Mongols,
Novgorod instead of Moscow might have become the prototype of modern
Russia, and a republic instead of a despotism have been established in
that mighty land. The sword of the Tartar cast into the scales
overweighted the balance. It gave Moscow the supremacy, and liberty
fell.
Ivan the Great, in his determined effort to subject all Russia to his
autocratic sway, saw before him three republican communities, the free
cities of Novgorod, Viatka, and Pskof, and took steps to sweep these
last remnants of ancient freedom from his path. Novgorod, as much the
most important of these, especially demands our attention. With its fall
Russian liberty fell to the earth.
At that time Novgorod was one of the richest and most powerful cities of
the earth. It was an ally rather than a subject of Moscow, and all the
north of Russia was under its sway and contributed to its wealth. But
luxury had sapped its strength, and it held its liberties more by
purchase than by courage. Some of these liberties had already been lost,
seized by the grand prince. The proud burghers chafed under this
invasion of their time-honored privileges, and in 1471, inspired by the
seeming timidity of Ivan, they determined to regain them.
It was a woman that brought about the revolt. Marfa, a rich and
influential widow of the city, had fallen in love with a Lithuanian,
and, inspired at once by the passions of love and ambition, sought to
attach her country to that of her lover. She opened her palace to the
citizens and lavished on them her treasures, seeking to inspire them
with her own views. Her efforts were successful: the officers of the
grand prince were driven out, and his domains seized; and when he
threatened reprisal they broke into open revolt, and bound themselves by
treaty to Casimir, prince of Lithuania.
But events were to prove that the turbulent citizens were no match for
the crafty Ivan, who moved slowly but ever steadily to his goal, and
made secure each footstep before taking a step in advance. His
insidious policy roused three separate hostilities against Novgorod. The
pride of the nobles was stirred up against its democracy; the greed of
the princes made them eager to seize its wealth; the fanatical people
were taught that this great city was an apostate to the faith.
These hostile forces proved too much for the city against which they
were directed. Novgorod was taken and plundered, though Ivan did not yet
deprive it of its liberties. He had powerful princes to deal with, and
did not dare to seize so rich a prey without letting them share the
spoil. But he ruined the city by devastation and plunder, deprived it of
its tributaries, the city and territory of Perm, and turned from
Novgorod to Moscow the rich commerce of this section. Taking advantage
of some doubtful words in the treaty of submission, he held himself to
be legislator and supreme judge of the captive city. Such was the first
result of the advice of an ambitious woman.
The next step of the autocrat added to his influence. Novgorod being
threatened with an attack from Livonia, he sent thither troops and
envoys to fight and negotiate in his name, thus taking from the city,
whose resources he had already drained, its old right of making peace
and war.
The ill feeling between the rich and the poor of Novgorod was fomented
by his agents; all complaints were required to be made to him; he still
further impoverished the rich by the presents and magnificent receptions
which his presence among them demanded, and dazzled the eyes of the
people by the Oriental state and splendor which had been adopted by the
court of Moscow, and which he displayed in their midst.
The nobles who had formerly been his enemies now became his victims. He
had induced the people to denounce them, and at once seized them and
sent them in chains to Moscow. The people, blinded by this seeming
attention to their complaints, remained heedless of the violation of the
ancient law of their republic, "that none of its citizens should ever be
tried or punished out of the limits of its own territory."
Thus tyranny made its slow way. The citizens, once governed and judged
by their own peers, now made their appeals to the grand prince and were
summoned to appear before his tribunal. "Never since Rurik," say the
annals, "had such an event happened; never had the grand princes of Kief
and Vladimir seen the Novgorodians come and submit to them as their
judges. Ivan alone could reduce Novgorod to that degree of humiliation."
This work was done with the deliberation of a settled policy. Ivan did
not molest Marfa, who had instigated the revolt; his sentences were just
and equitable; men were blinded by his seeming moderation; and for full
seven years he pursued his insidious way, gradually weaning the people
from their ancient customs, and taking advantage of every imprudence and
thoughtless concession on their part to ground on it a claim to
increased authority.
It was the glove of silk he had thus far extended to them. Within it lay
concealed the hand of iron. The grasp of the iron hand was made when,
during an audience, the envoy of the republic, through treason or
thoughtlessness, addressed him by the name of sovereign (_Gosudar_,
"liege lord," instead of _Gospodin_, "master," the usual title).
Ivan, taking advantage of this, at once claimed all the absolute rights
which custom had attached to that title. He demanded that the republic
should take an oath to him as its judge and legislator, receive his
boyars as their rulers, and yield to them the ancient palace of
Yaroslaf, the sacred temple of their liberties, in which for more than
five centuries their assemblies had been held.
This demand roused the Novgorodians to their danger. They saw how
blindly they had yielded to tyranny. A transport of indignation inspired
them. For the last time the great bell of liberty sent forth its peal of
alarm. Gathering tumultuously at the palace from which they were
threatened with expulsion, they vigorously resolved,--
"Ivan is in fact our lord, but he shall never be our sovereign; the
tribunal of his deputies may sit at Goroditch, but never at Novgorod:
Novgorod is, and always shall be, its own judge."
In their rage they murdered several of the nobles whom they suspected of
being friends of the tyrant. The envoy who had uttered the imprudent
word was torn to pieces by their furious hands. They ended by again
invoking the aid of Lithuania.
On hearing of this outbreak the despot feigned surprise. Groans broke
from his lips, as if he felt that he had been basely used. His
complaints were loud, and the calling in of a foreign power was brought
against Novgorod as a frightful aggravation of its crime. Under cover of
these groans and complaints an army was gathered to which all the
provinces of the empire were forced to send contingents.
These warlike preparations alarmed the citizens. All Russia seemed
arrayed against them, and they tremblingly asked for conditions of peace
in accordance with their ancient honor. "I will reign at Novgorod as I
do at Moscow," replied the imperious despot. "I must have domains on
your territory. You must give up your Posadnick, and the bell which
summons you to the national council." Yet this threat of enslavement was
craftily coupled with a promise to respect their liberty.
This declaration, the most terrible that free citizens could have heard,
threw them into a state of violent agitation. Now in defiant fury they
seized their arms, now in helpless despondency let them fall. For a
whole month their crafty adversary permitted them to exhibit their rage,
not caring to use the great army with which he had encircled the city
when assured that the terror of his presence would soon bring him
victory.
They yielded: they could do nothing but yield. No blood was shed. Ivan
had gained his end, and was not given to useless cruelty. Marfa and
seven of the principal citizens were sent prisoners to Moscow and their
property was confiscated. No others were molested. But on the 15th of
January, 1478, the national assemblies ceased, and the citizens took the
oath of subjection. The great republic, which had existed from
prehistoric times, was at an end, and despotism ruled supreme.
On the 18th the boyars of Novgorod entered the service of Ivan, and the
possessions of the clergy were added to the domain of the prince, giving
him as vassals three hundred thousand boyar-followers, on whom he
depended to hold Novgorod in a state of submission. A great part of the
territories belonging to the city became the victor's prize, and it is
said that, as a share of his spoil, he sent to Moscow three hundred
cart-loads of gold, silver, and precious stones, besides vast quantities
of furs, cloths, and other goods of value.