1479, Viatka, a colony of Novgorod, was reduced to like slavery. The end
had come. Republicanism in Russia was extinguished, and gradually the
republican population was removed to the soil of Moscow and replaced by
Muscovites, born to the yoke.
The liberties of Novgorod were gone. It had been robbed of its wealth.
Its commerce remained, which in time would have restored its prosperity.
But this too Ivan destroyed, not intentionally, but effectually. A burst
of despotic anger completed the work of ruin. The tyrant, having been
insulted by a Hanseatic city, ordered all the merchants of the Hansa
then in Novgorod to be put in chains and their property confiscated. As
a result, that confidence under which alone commerce can flourish
vanished, the North sought new channels for its trade, and Novgorod the
Great, once peopled by four hundred thousand souls, declined until only
an insignificant borough marks the spot where once it stood.
It is an interesting fact that this final blow to Russian republicanism
was dealt in 1492, the very year in which Columbus discovered a new
world beyond the seas, within which the greatest republic the world has
ever known was destined to arise.
_IVAN THE TERRIBLE._
In seeking examples of the excesses to which absolute power may lead, we
usually name the wicked emperors of Rome, among whom Nero stands most
notorious as a monster of cruelty. Modern history has but one Nero in
its long lines of kings and emperors, and him we find in Ivan IV. of
Russia, surnamed the Terrible.
This cruel czar succeeded to the throne when but three years of age. In
his early years he lived in a state of terror, being insulted and
despised by the powerful nobles who controlled the power of the throne.
At fourteen years of age his enemies were driven out and his kinsmen
came into power. They, caring only for blood and plunder, prompted the
boy to cruelty, teaching him to rob, to torture, to massacre. They
applauded him when he amused himself by tormenting animals; and when,
riding furiously through the streets of Moscow, he dashed all before him
to the ground and trampled women and children under his horses' feet,
they praised him for spirit and energy.
This was an education fitted to make a Nero. But, happily for Russia,
for thirteen years the tiger was chained. Ivan was seventeen years of
age when a frightful conflagration which broke out in Moscow gave rise
to a revolt against the Glinski, his wicked kinsmen. They were torn to
pieces by the furious multitude, while terror rent his youthful soul.
Amid the horror of flames, cries of vengeance, and groans of the dying,
a monk appeared before the trembling boy, and with menacing looks and
upraised hand bade him shrink from the wrath of Heaven, which his
cruelty had aroused.
Certain appearances which appeared supernatural aided the effect of
these words, the nature of Ivan seemed changed as by a miracle, dread of
Heaven's vengeance controlled his nature, and he yielded himself to the
influence of the wise and good. Pious priests and prudent boyars became
his advisers, Anastasia, his young and virtuous bride, gained an
influence over him, and Russia enjoyed justice and felicity.
During the succeeding thirteen years the country was ably and wisely
governed, order was everywhere established, the army was strengthened,
fortresses were built, enemies were defeated, the morals of the clergy
were improved, a new code of laws was formed, arts were introduced from
Europe, a printing-office was opened, the city of Archangel was built,
and the north of the empire was thrown open to commerce.
All this was the work of Adashef, Ivan's wise prime minister, aided by
the influence of the noble-hearted Anastasia. In 1560, at the end of
this period of mild and able administration, a sudden change took place
and the tiger was set free. Anastasia died. A disease seized Ivan which
seemed to affect his brain. The remainder of his life was marked by
paroxysms of frightful barbarity.
A new terror seized him, that of a vast conspiracy of the nobles
against his power, and for safety he retired to Alexandrovsky, a
fortress in the midst of a gloomy forest. Here he assumed the monkish
dress with three hundred of his minions, abandoning to the boyars the
government of the empire, but keeping the military power in his own
hands.
On all sides Russia now suffered from its enemies. Moscow, with several
hundred thousand Muscovites, was burned by the Tartars in 1571. Disaster
followed disaster, which Ivan was too cowardly and weak to avert.
Trusting to incompetent generals abroad, he surrounded himself at home
with a guard of six thousand chosen men, who were hired to play the part
of spies and assassins. They carried as emblems of office a dog's head
and a broom, the first to indicate that they worried the enemies of the
czar, the second that they swept them from the face of the earth. They
were chosen from the lowest class of the people, and to them was given
the property of their victims, that they might murder without mercy.
The excesses of Ivan are almost too horrible to tell. He began by
putting to death several great boyars of the family of Rurik, while
their wives and children were driven naked into the forests, where they
died under the scourge. Novgorod had been ruined by his grandfather. He
marched against it, in a freak of madness, gathered a throng of the
helpless people within a great enclosure, and butchered them with his
own hand. When worn out with these labors of death, he turned on them
his guard, his slaves, and his dogs, while for a month afterwards
hundreds of them were flung daily into the waters of the river, through
the broken ice. What little vitality Ivan III. had left in the
republican city was stamped out under the feet of this insensate brute.
Tver and Pskov, two others of the free cities of the empire, suffered
from his frightful presence. Then returning to Moscow, he filled the
public square with red-hot brasiers, great brass caldrons, and eighty
gibbets, and here five hundred of the leading nobles were slain by his
orders, after being subjected to terrible tortures.
Women were treated as barbarously as men. Ivan, with a cruelty never
before matched, ordered many of them to be hanged at their own doors,
and forced the husbands to go in and out under the swinging and
festering corpses of those they had loved and cherished. In other cases
husbands or children were fastened, dead, in their seats at table, and
the family forced to sit at meals, for days, opposite these terrifying
objects.
Seeking daily for new conceits of cruelty, he forced one lord to kill
his father and another his brother, while it was his delight to let
loose his dogs and bears upon the people in the public square, the
animals being left to devour the mutilated bodies of those they killed.
Eight hundred women were drowned in one frightful mass, and their
relatives were forced under torture to point out where their wealth lay
hidden.
It is said that sixty thousand people were slain by Ivan's orders in
Novgorod alone; how many perished in the whole realm history does not
relate. His only warlike campaign was against the Livonians. These he
failed to conquer, but held their resistance as a rebellion, and ordered
his prisoners to be thrown into boiling caldrons, spitted on lances, or
roasted at fires which he stirred up with his own hands.
This monster of iniquity married in all seven wives. He sought for an
eighth from the court of Queen Elizabeth of England, and the daughter of
the Earl of Huntington was offered him as a victim,--a willing one, it
seems, influenced by the glamour which power exerts over the mind; but
before the match was concluded the intended bride took fright, and
begged to be spared the terrible honor of wedding the Russian czar.
Yet all the excesses of Ivan did not turn the people against him. He
assumed the manner of one inspired, claiming divine powers, and all the
injuries and degradation which he inflicted upon the people were
accepted not only with resignation but with adoration. The Russians of
that age of ignorance seem to have looked upon God and the czar as one,
and submitted to blows, wounds, and insults with a blind servility to
which only abject superstition could have led.
[Illustration: CHURCH AND TOWER OF IVAN THE GREAT.]
The end came at last, in a final freak of madness. An humble
supplication, coming from the most faithful of his subjects, was made to
him; but in his distorted brain it indicated a new conspiracy of the
boyars, of which his eldest and ablest son was to be the leader. In a
transport of insane rage the frenzied emperor raised his iron-bound
staff and struck to the earth with a mortal blow this hope of his race.
This was his last excess. Regret for his hasty act, though not remorse
for his murders, assailed him, and he soon after died, after twenty-six
years of insane cruelties, ordering new executions almost with his
latest breath.
_THE CONQUEST OF SIBERIA._
In the year 1558 a family of wealthy merchants, Stroganof by name, began
to barter with the Tartar tribes dwelling east of the Ural Mountains.
Ivan IV. had granted to this family the desert districts of the Kama,
with great privileges in trade, and the power to levy troops and build
forts--at their own expense--as a security against the robbers who
crossed the Urals to prey upon their settled neighbors to the west. In
return the Stroganofs were privileged to follow their example in a more
legal manner, by the brigandage of trade between civilization and
barbarism.
These robbers came from the region now known as Siberia, which extends
to-day through thousands of miles of width, from the Urals to the
Pacific. Before this time we know little about this great expanse of
land. It seems to have been peopled by a succession of races, immigrants
from the south, each new wave of people driving the older tribes deeper
into the frozen regions of the north. Early in the Christian era there
came hither a people destitute of iron, but expert in the working of
bronze, silver, and gold. They had wide regions of irrigated fields, and
a higher civilization than that of those who in time took their place.
People of Turkish origin succeeded these tribes about the eleventh
century. They brought with them weapons of iron and made fine pottery.
In the thirteenth century, when the great Mongol outbreak took place
under Genghis Khan, the Turkish kingdom in Siberia was destroyed and
Tartars took their place. Civilization went decidedly down hill. Such
was the state of affairs when Russia began to turn eyes of longing
towards Siberia.
The busy traders of Novgorod had made their way into Siberia as early as
the eleventh century. But this republic fell, and the trade came to an
end. In 1555, Khan Ediger, who had made himself a kingdom in Siberia,
and whose people had crossed swords with the Russians beyond the Urals,
sent envoys to Moscow, who consented to pay to Russia a yearly tribute
of a thousand sables, thus acknowledging Russian supremacy.
This tribute showed that there were riches beyond the mountains. The
Stroganofs made their way to the barrier of the hills, and it was not
long before the trader was followed by the soldier. The invasion of
Siberia was due to an event which for the time threatened the total
overthrow of the Russian government. A Cossack brigand, Stepan Rozni by
name, had long defied the forces of the czar, and gradually gained in
strength until he had an army of three hundred thousand men under his
command. If he had been a soldier of ability he might have made himself
lord of the empire. Being a brigand in grain, he was soon overturned and
his forces dispersed.
Among his followers was one Yermak, a chief of the Cossacks of the Don,
whom the czar sentenced to death for his love of plunder, but afterwards
pardoned. Yermak and his followers soon found the rule of Moscow too
stringent for their ideas of personal liberty, and he led a Cossack band
to the Stroganof settlements in Perm.
Tradition tells us that the Stroganof of that date did not relish the
presence of his unruly guests, with their free ideas of property rights,
and suggested to Yermak that Siberia offered a promising field for a
ready sword. He would supply him with food and arms if he saw fit to
lead an expedition thither.
The suggestion accorded well with Yermak's humor. He at once began to
enlist volunteers for the enterprise, adding to his own Cossack band a
reinforcement of Russians and Tartars and of German and Polish prisoners
of war, until he had sixteen hundred and thirty-six men under his
command. With these he crossed the mountains in 1580, and terrified the
natives to submission with his fire-arms, a form of weapon new to them.
Making their way down the Tura and Taghil Rivers, the adventurers
crossed the immense untrodden forests of Tobol, and Kutchum, the Tartar
khan, was assailed in his capital town of Ister, near where Tobolsk now
stands.
Many battles with the Tartars were fought, Ister was taken, the khan
fled to the steppes, and his cousin was made prisoner by the
adventurers. Yermak now, having added by his valor a great domain to the
Russian empire, purchased the favor of Ivan IV. by the present of this
new kingdom. He made his way to the Irtish and Obi, opened trade with
the rich khanate of Bokhara, south of the desert, and in various ways
sought to consolidate the conquest he had made. But misfortune came to
the conqueror. One day, being surprised by the Tartars when unprepared,
he leaped into the Irtish in full armor and tried to swim its rapid
current. The armor he wore had been sent him by the czar, and had served
him well in war. It proved too heavy for his powers of swimming, bore
him beneath the hungry waters, and brought the career of the victorious
brigand to an end. After his death his dismayed followers fled from
Siberia, yielding it to Tartar hands again.
Yermak--in his way a rival of Cortez and Pizarro--gained by his conquest
the highest fame among the Russian people. They exalted him to the level
of a hero, and their church has raised him to the rank of a saint, at
whose tomb miracles are performed. As regards the Russian saints, it may
here be remarked that they have been constructed, as a rule, from very
unsanctified timber, as may be seen from the examples we have heretofore
given. Not only the people and the priests but the poets have paid their
tribute to Yermak's fame, epic poems having been written about his
exploits and his deeds made familiar in popular song.
Though the Cossacks withdrew after Yermak's death, others soon succeeded
them. The furs of Siberia formed a rich prize whose allurement could not
be ignored, and new bands of hunters and adventurers poured into the
country, sustained by regular troops from Moscow. The advance was made
through the northern districts to avoid the denser populations of the
south. New detachments of troops were sent, who built forts and settled
laborers around them, with the duty of supplying the garrisons with
food, powder, and arms. By 1650 the Amur was reached and followed to the
Pacific Ocean.
It was a brief period in which to conquer a country of such vast extent.
But no organized resistance was met, and the land lay almost at the
mercy of the invaders. There was vigorous opposition by the tribes, but
they were soon subdued. The only effective resistance they met was that
of the Chinese, who obliged the Cossacks to quit the Amur, which river
they claimed. In 1855 the advance here began again, and the whole course
of the river was occupied, with much territory to its south. Siberia,
thus conquered by arms, is being made secure for Russia by a
trans-continental railroad and hosts of new settlers, and promises in
the future to become a land of the greatest prosperity and wealth.
[Illustration: KIAKHTA, SIBERIA.]
_THE MACBETH OF RUSSIA._
On the 15th of May, 1591, five boys were playing in the court-yard of
the Russian palace at Uglitch. With them were the governess and nurse of
the principal child--a boy ten years of age--and a servant-woman. The
child had a knife in his hand, with which he was amusing himself by
thrusting it into the ground or cutting a piece of wood.
Unluckily, the attention of the women for a brief interval was drawn
aside. When the nurse looked at her charge again, to her horror she
found him writhing on the ground, bathed in blood which poured from a
large wound in his throat.
The shrieks of the nurse quickly drew others to the spot, and in a
moment there was a terrible uproar, for the dying boy was no less a
person than Dmitri, son of Ivan the Terrible, brother of Feodor, the
reigning czar, and heir to the crown of Russia. The tocsin was sounded,
and the populace thronged into the court-yard, thinking that the palace
was on fire. On learning what had actually happened they burst into
uncontrollable fury. The child had not killed himself, but had been
murdered, they said, and a victim for their rage was sought.
In a moment the governess was hurled bleeding and half alive to the
ground, and one of her slaves, who came to her aid, was killed. The
keeper of the palace was accused of the crime, and, though he fled and
barred himself within a house, the infuriated mob broke through the
doors and killed him and his son. The body of the child was carried into
a neighboring church, and here the son of the governess, against whom
suspicion had been directed, was murdered before it under his mother's
eyes. Fresh victims to the wrath of the populace were sought, and the
lives of the governess and some others were with difficulty saved.
As for the child who had killed himself or had been killed, alarming
stories had recently been set afloat. He was said to be the image of his
terrible father, and to manifest an unnatural delight in blood and the
sight of pain, his favorite amusement being to torture and kill animals.
But it is doubtful if any of this was true, for there was then one in
power who had a reason for arousing popular prejudice against the boy.
That this may be better understood we must go back. Ivan had killed his
ablest son, as told in a previous story, and Feodor, the present czar,
was a feeble, timid, sickly incapable, who was a mere tool in the hands
of his ambitious minister, Boris Godunof. Boris craved the throne.
Between him and this lofty goal lay only the feeble Feodor and the child
Dmitri, the sole direct survivors of the dynasty of Rurik. With their
death without children that great line would be extinguished.
The story of Boris reminds us in several particulars of that of the
Scotch usurper Macbeth. His future career had been predicted, in the
dead of night, by astrologers, who said, "You shall yet wear the
crown." Then they became silent, as if seeing horrors which they dared
not reveal. Boris insisted on knowing more, and was told that he should
reign, but only for seven years. In joy he exclaimed, "No matter, though
it be for only seven days, so that I reign!"
This ambitious lord, who ruled already if he did not reign, had
therefore a purpose in exciting prejudice against and distrust of
Dmitri, the only heir to the crown, and in taking steps for his removal.
Feodor dead, the throne would fall like ripe fruit into his own hands.
Yet, whether guilty of the murder or not, he took active steps to clear
himself of the dark suspicion of guilt. An inquest was held, and the
verdict rendered that the boy had killed himself by accident. At once
the regent proceeded to punish those who had taken part in the outbreak
at Uglitch. The czaritza, mother of Dmitri, who had first incited the
mob, was forced to take the veil. Her brothers, who had declared the act
one of murder, were sent to remote prisons. Uglitch was treated with
frightful severity. More than two hundred of its inhabitants were put to
death. Others were maimed and thrown into dungeons. All the rest, except
those who had fled, were exiled to Siberia, and with them was banished
the very church-bell which had called them out by its tocsin peal. A
town of thirty thousand inhabitants was depopulated that, as people
said, every evidence of the guilt of Boris Godunof might be destroyed.
This dreadful violence did Boris more harm than good. Macbeth stabbed
the sleeping grooms to hide his guilt. Boris destroyed a city. But he
only caused the people to look on him as an assassin and to doubt the
motives of even his noblest acts.
A fierce fire broke out that left much of Moscow in ruin. Boris rebuilt
whole streets and distributed money freely among the people. But even
those who received this aid said that he had set fire to the city
himself that he might win applause with his money. A Tartar army invaded
the empire and appeared at the gates of Moscow. All were in terror but
Boris, who hastily built redoubts, recruited soldiers, and inspired all
with his own courage. The Tartars were defeated, and hardly a third of
them reached home again. Yet all the return the able regent received was
the popular saying that he had called in the Tartars in order to make
the people forget the death of Dmitri.
A child was born to Feodor,--a girl. The enemies of the regent instantly
declared that a boy had been born and that he had substituted for it a
girl. It died in a few days, and then it was said that he had poisoned
it.
Yet Boris went on, disdaining his enemies, winning power as he went. He
gained the favor of the clergy by giving Russia a patriarch of its own.
The nobles who opposed him were banished or crushed. He made the
peasants slaves of the land, and thus won over the petty lords. Cities
were built, fortresses erected, the enemies of Russia defeated; Siberia
was brought under firm control, and the whole nation made to see that
it had never been ruled by abler hands.
Boris in all this was strongly paving his way to the throne. In 1598 the
weak Feodor died. He left no sons, and with him, its fifty-second
sovereign, the dynasty of Rurik the Varangian came to an end. It had
existed for more than seven centuries. Branches of the house of Rurik
remained, yet no member of it dared aspire to that throne which the
tyrant Ivan had made odious.
A new ruler had to be chosen by the voice of those in power, and Boris
stood supreme among the aspirants. The chronicles tell us, with striking
brevity, "The election begins; the people look up to the nobles, the
nobles to the grandees, the grandees to the patriarch; he speaks, he
names Boris; and instantaneously, and as one man, all re-echo that
formidable name."
And now Godunof played an amusing game. He held the reins of power so
firmly that he could safely enact a transparent farce. He refused the
sceptre. The grandees and the people begged him to accept it, and he
took refuge from their solicitations in a monastery. This comedy, which
even Caesar had not long played, Boris kept up for over a month. Yet from
his cell he moved Russia at his will.
In truth, the more he seemed to withdraw the more eager became all to
make him accept. Priests, nobles, people, besieged him with their
supplications. He refused, and again refused, and for six weeks kept all
Russia in suspense. Not until he saw before him the highest grandees and
clergy of the realm on their knees, tears in their eyes, in their hands
the relics of the saints and the image of the Redeemer, did he yield
what seemed a reluctant assent, and come forth from his cell to accept
that throne which was the chief object of his desires.
But Boris on the throne still resembled Macbeth. The memory of his
crimes pursued him, and he sought to rule by fear instead of love. He
endeavored, indeed, to win the people by shows and prodigality, but the
powerful he ruled with a heavy hand, destroying all whom he had reason
to fear, threatening the extinction of many great families by forbidding
their members to marry, seizing the wealth of those he had ruined. The
family of the Romanofs, allied to the line of Rurik, and soon to become
pre-eminent in Russia, he pursued with rancor, its chief being obliged
to turn monk to escape the axe. As monk he in time rose to the headship
of the church.