Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

VII. RUSSIA.

RUSSIA: IVAN III.—For two centuries Russia paid tribute to the Tartar conquerors in the South, the "Golden Horde" (p. 283). The liberator of his people from this yoke was Ivan III.,—Ivan the Great,—(1462-1505). In the period when the nations of the West were becoming organized, Russia escaped from its servitude, and made some beginnings of intellectual progress. Ivan was a cold and calculating man, who preferred to negotiate rather than to fight; but he inflicted savage punishments, and even "his glance caused women to faint." He was able to subdue the rich trading-city of Novgorod (1478), which had been connected with the Hanseatic League, and where a party endeavored to bring to pass a union with Poland. He conquered unknown frozen districts in the North, and smaller princedoms, including Tver, in the interior. The empire of the Horde was so broken up that Ivan achieved an almost bloodless triumph, which made Russia free. In wars with Lithuania, Western Russia was reconquered up to the Soja. Ivan married Sophia Palæologus, a niece of the last Christian emperor of the East. She taught him "to penetrate the secret of autocracy." Numerous Greek emigrants of different arts and professions came to Moscow. Ivan took for the new arms of Russia the two-headed eagle of the Byzantine Cæsars, and thenceforward Russia looked on herself as the heir of the Eastern Empire. The Russian metropolitan, called afterwards Patriarch, was now elected by Russian bishops. Moscow became "the metropolis of orthodoxy," and as such the protector of Greek Christians in the East. Ivan laid out in the city the fortified inclosure styled the Kremlin. He brought into the country German and Italian mechanics. It was he who founded the greatness of Russia. Vassali Ivanovitch (1505-1533), his son, continued the struggle with Lithuania, and acquired Smolensk (1514). He exchanged embassies with most of the sovereigns of the West.

IVAN IV. (1533-1584).—Ivan IV., Ivan the Terrible, first took the title of Czar, since attached to "the Autocrat of all the Russias." It was the name that was given, in the Slavonian books which he read, to the ancient kings and emperors of the East and of Rome. Moscow was now to be a third Rome, the successor of Constantinople. Ivan conquered the Tartar principalities of Kazan and Astrakhan in the South, and extended his dominion to the Caucasus. The Volga, through its entire course, was now a Russian river. He brought German mechanics into Russia, established printing-presses, and made a commercial treaty with Queen Elizabeth, whom he invited to an alliance against Poland and Sweden. It was in this reign (1581-1582) that a brigand chief, Irmak by name (a Cossack, in the service of the Czar), crossed the Urals with a few hundred followers, and made the conquest of the vast region of Siberia, then under the dominion of the Tartars. Ivan sent thither bishops and priests. He had to cede Livonia to the Swedes, who, with their allies were too strong to be overcome. In Russia, he put down the aristocracy, and crushed all resistance to his personal rule. Whatever tyranny and cruelty this result cost, it prevented Russia from becoming an anarchic kingdom like Poland. Ivan, by forming the national guard of streltsi or strelitz, laid the foundation of a standing army. In his personal conduct, brutal and sensual practices alternated with exercises of piety. In a fit of wrath, he struck his son Ivan a fatal blow, and in consequence was overwhelmed with sorrow. After a short reign of his second son, Feodor (1584-1598), who was weak in mind and body, the throne was usurped by one of the aristocracy, the able and ambitious regent, Boris Godounof (1598-1605).

THE COSSACKS.—These were brought into subjection by Ivan IV. and his successors. They were robber hordes of mixed origin, partly Tartar and partly Russian. Their abodes were near the rapids of the Dnieper, and on the Don, and at the foot of the Caucasus. They were fierce warriors, and did a great service to Russia in subduing the wild nomad tribes on the north and east of the regions where the Cossacks dwelt.

TIMES OF TROUBLE.—After the death of Boris Godounof, two pretenders, one after the other, each assuming to be Demetrius, the younger son of Ivan,—a son who had been put to death,— seized on power. This was rendered possible by the mutual strife of Russian factions, and by the help afforded to the impostors by the Poles. Sigismund III., king of Poland, openly espoused the cause of the second Demetrius. Moscow was forced to surrender (1610); and the czar whom the nobles had enthroned, Basil V., died in a Polish prison. These events gave rise to a lasting enmity between the two Slavonic nations. In 1611 the Poles were driven out by a national rising, which led to the elevation to the throne of Michael Romanoff (1613-1645), the founder of the present dynasty of czars. Peace was concluded with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and with the Poles. Commercial treaties were made with foreign nations. In Russia there was a great increase of internal prosperity.

SERFDOM IN RUSSIA.—The lower classes in Russia consisted of three divisions: 1. Slaves, captives taken in war, who were bought and sold. 2. The inscribed peasants, who were attached to the soil and became serfs. They belonged to the commune, or village, which held the land, and as a unit paid to the lord his dues. They made up the bulk of the rural population. The peasant was an arbitrary master, a little czar in his own family. 3. The free laborers, who could change their masters, but who soon fell into the rank of serfs. While the higher classes in Russia advanced, the condition of the rustics for several centuries continued to grow worse.

RUSSIAN SOCIETY.—The great nobles kept in their castles a host of servants. These were slaves, subject to the caprices of their master. Russian women were kept in seclusion. There was an Asiatic stamp imprinted on civil and social life. "Thanks to the general ignorance, there was no intellectual life in Russia: thanks to the seclusion of women, there was no society." By degrees intercourse with Western Europe was destined to soften, in some particulars, the harsh outlines of this picture.

VIII. FRENCH INVASIONS OF ITALY.

EFFECT OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY.—The establishment of absolute monarchy in Western Europe placed the resources of the nations at the service of their respective kings. The desire of national aggrandizement led to great European wars, which took the place of the feudal conflicts of a former day. These wars began with the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII., king of France.

MOTIVES OF THE INVASION.—To this unwise enterprise Charles VIII. was impelled by a romantic dream of conquest, which was not to be limited to the Italian peninsula. He intended to attack the Turks afterward, and to establish once more, under his protection, a Latin kingdom at Jerusalem. His counselors could not dissuade him from the hazardous undertaking. In order to set his hands free, he made treaties that were disadvantageous to France with Henry VII., Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic. He was invited to cross the Alps by Ludovico il Moro (p. 374), by the Neapolitan barons, by all the enemies of Pope Alexander VI. The special ground of the invasion was the claim of the French king, through the house of Anjou, to the throne of Naples. In 1494 Charles crossed the Alps with a large army, and, with the support of Ludovico, advanced from Milan, through Florence and Rome to Naples. When he was crowned he wore the imperial insignia as if pretending to the Empire of the East also. The rapid progress of the French power alarmed the Pope and the other princes, including Ludovico himself, who was afraid that the king might cast a covetous eye on his own principality. A formidable league was formed against Charles, including, besides the Italian princes, Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Henry VII. of England. It was the first European combination against France. Charles left eleven thousand men under Gilbert de Montpensier, at Naples; and after being exposed to much peril, although he won a victory at Fornovo (1495), he made his way back to France. Ferdinand II., aided by Spanish troops, expelled the French from Naples; and the remnant of their garrisons, after the death of Montpensier, was led back to France. The conquests of Charles were lost as speedily as they were gained. His great expedition proved a failure.

DEATH OF SAVONAROLA.—Civil strife continued in the Italian states. Savonarola had been excommunicated by Alexander VI. The combination of parties against him was too strong to be overcome by his supporters, and he was put to death in 1498.

LOUIS XII. (1498-1515): HIS FIRST ITALIAN WAR.—On the death of Charles VIII., who left no male children, the crown reverted to his nearest relative, Louis of Orleans. He entered once more on the aggressive enterprise begun by his predecessor. He laid claim not only to the rights of Charles VIII. at Naples, but also claimed Milan through his grandmother Valentine Visconti. In alliance with Venice, and with Florence to which he promised Pisa, then in revolt against the detested Florentine supremacy, and with the support of Cæsar Borgia, he entered Italy, and defeated Ludovico il Moro at Novara (1500). Ludovico had before been driven out of Milan by the French, but had regained the city. He was imprisoned in France; and on his release twelve years afterward, he died from joy. Louis bargained with Ferdinand the Catholic to divide with him the Neapolitan kingdom. Ferdinand, the king of Naples, was thus dethroned. But Ferdinand of Spain was as treacherous in his dealing with Louis as he had been in relation to his Neapolitan namesake; and the kingdom fell into the hands of Gonsalvo de Cordova, the Spanish general.

THE SECOND ITALIAN WAR OF LOUIS.—Anxious for revenge, Louis sent two armies over the Pyrenees, which failed of success, and a third army into Italy under La Trémoille, which was defeated by Gonsalvo, notwithstanding the gallantry of Bayard, the pattern of chivalry, the French knight "without fear and without reproach."

THE THIRD ITALIAN WAR OF LOUIS.—The third Italian war of Louis began in 1507, and lasted eight years. It includes the history of the League of Cambray, and also of the anti-French League subsequently formed. France was barely saved from great calamities in consequence of foolish treaties, three in number, made at Blois in 1504. The party of the queen, Anne of Brittany, secured the betrothal of Claude, the child of Louis XII., to Charles of Austria, afterwards Charles V., the son of Philip, with the promise of Burgundy and Brittany as her dowry. The arrangement was repudiated by the estates of France (1506). Claude was betrothed to Francis of Angoulême, the king's nearest male relative, and the heir of the French crown. On the marriage of Ferdinand to Germaine of Foix, Louis agreed to give up his claims on Naples. The sufferings of Italy had redounded to the advantage of Venice. Among her other gains, she had annexed certain towns in the Romagna which fell into anarchy at the expulsion of Cæsar Borgia. The energetic Pope, Julius II., organized a combination, the celebrated League of Cambray (1508), between himself, the Emperor Maximilian, the kings of France and of Aragon: its object was the humbling of Venice, and the division of her mainland possessions among the partners in the League.