The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 17

by Unknown

CHAPTER IV. FROM IVAN THE GREAT TO IVAN THE TERRIBLE

The great ruler who occupied the throne of Moscow at the end of the fifteenth century, was richly endowed with understanding; to his contemporaries he appeared more lucky than active, but meanwhile it was his active mind that directed all the complicated and tangled threads of the foreign and domestic relations. If his contemporaries did not always do justice to the great unificator of the land of Russia, neither is posterity always just to him. We must allow that much had been prepared by his predecessors, and this was also recognised by contemporaries; but it is nevertheless impossible not to acknowledge that Ivan towers far above his predecessors, both by his solution of ancient problems—the unification of Russia (which he had almost completed) and the throwing off of the Tatar yoke—and the raising of new ones. The ability to take advantage of circumstances places Ivan in the rank of great men. If we do not recognise his greatness, then we must apply the same judgment in part to Peter, who was largely only the more determined successor of his brother, father, and grandfather.—Bestuzhev Riumin.[b]

ACCESSION OF IVAN (III) VASILIEVITCH

[1462-1584 A.D.]

The dynasty of the Muscovite princes, which commenced in the person of Ivan Kalita, and was preserved unbroken in the lineal descent, was fortunately strengthened by the accident of the longevity of his successors. The reigns of Ivan, of Simeon the Proud, of Dmitri Donskoi, of Vasili, and of Vasili the Blind, embraced a period of 130 years. During that time the people had become habituated to a right which saved them from the contests of rival competitors. So many protracted reigns had stamped the legitimate authority with an unquestioned ascendency, and with this growth of time its powers inevitably increased. The manners of the Russians were now formed under a rule in which the succession was fixed and immutable, and under which a progressive system of legislation was gradually assuming a compact and tangible form. The chaos of antagonistic principles—of that misrule which is born of short-lived theories, of constant interruption, and unsettled governments—was rapidly dissolving; the light of defined administration and regulated power was rising upon the empire; and the people, who were now beginning to understand the benefits of constituted rights, were ready to support their maintenance.

Under these auspicious circumstances, Ivan III, or, as he is called by some historians, Ivan the Great, ascended the throne.

It was not to be expected that a liberal and enlightened government could at once spring from the materials which were accumulated in seasons of anarchy, relieved only by interstitial gleams of peace. The natural issue of a power purchased by enormous sacrifices, and reared up amidst difficulties, was unmitigated despotism. The grand princedom was erected in storms. Its power was built up by constant accessions won at the point of the sword, or procured by profligate bribery. It was not the growth of steady improvement, of public opinion, of the voluntary acquiescence of the people. It began by direct oppression, absolute tyranny, and open injustice. The acts of outrage which the grand princes committed in their efforts to sustain their authority were acts of necessity. They were placed in a situation of peril that exposed them equally to barbarian spoilers without, and insidious enemies within; and they were compelled to vindicate their authority by the force of arms and the arts of perfidy. Their whole career was a fluctuating war against a series of resistances. They conciliated less than they subdued, and the unity which was at last gained by perseverance in a mixed policy of violence and hypocrisy was more the bond of an interest in common, than the reasonable allegiance of a free people to a government of their own choice.

Throughout the struggle for the concentration of the supreme control in one head the church, as will already have been perceived, bore a prominent part. The authority of the clergy had gone on gradually assuming a more stern and arbitrary aspect, even while the political affairs of the country were undergoing daily vicissitudes. The evils that afflicted the state passed harmless over the church; and while the one was subjected to disasters that checked its progress towards prosperity, the other was constantly enlarging its powers, profiting by the misfortunes that surrounded it, and gleaning its share of the good fortune that occasionally improved the hopes of the people. In the early periods when Russia was merely the victim of her own dissensions, the church was freely admitted as a mediator, partly in virtue of her office as the dispenser of charity and peace, and partly from the veneration in which religion and its ordinances were held. When the Tatars invaded Russia, they perceived the mighty influence which the priests exercised over the passions of the people, and, fully persuaded of the wisdom of attaching to their cause an order of men who wielded so enormous a power, they increased their privileges, exonerated them from taxes, and placed such premiums of gain and protection upon the monkish habit, that the highest amongst the nobility, and many of the princes, embraced the clerical profession, and added their rich possessions to the revenues of the church. To such an extravagance was this estimation of the benefits of the cowl carried, that the majority of the grand princes took vows before their death, and died in the retired sanctuaries of the religious houses. The monks of the Greek religion, loaded with the spoils of friends and enemies, lived in fortified dwellings, like the nobles of other lands, and were defended by formidable retinues. The primate held a court superior in magnificence to that of the grand prince, and surrounded by boyars, guards, and all the luxuries of the east, he possessed almost unlimited power over life and death; he was the first person who was consulted on all questions of difficulty, and, as a means of exhibiting the supremacy of his station, he instituted public ceremonies, at which the princes assisted, holding the bridle of the ass on which he rode. This tendency of the church to outgrow the space wherein its roots were laid, was greatly forwarded by the fertilizing contributions which flowed in upon it from all quarters. Whenever a phenomenon in the physical world alarmed the superstitions of the people, the major part of the population bequeathed their wealth to the monasteries, with the hope of propitiating the favour of Heaven and securing happiness in the next world. The corruptions of the church of Rome had already crept into the administration of the Greek faith. The system of donations that prevailed in Papal Italy, where even the kingdoms of earth were bartered for the kingdom of heaven, had set an example of which the Russian clergy were not slow to avail themselves. It was, perhaps, a natural conclusion that the clemency of the Godhead could be purchased in a country where earthly justice and exemptions from punishments were sold for pecuniary considerations.

But the lenity and favour shown by the Tatars to the Greek clergy did not produce the effect upon which they calculated. The Tatars, accustomed to rule people of different religions, and possessing within themselves no ecclesiastical foundations, for their wandering mode of life prevented their priesthood from resolving itself into a corporation, viewed with comparative indifference the spreading institutions and growing strength of the church. They only contemplated in the honours and advantages they heaped upon it, the policy of gaining over to their side a powerful body of auxiliaries. But the indestructible spirit of Christianity shrunk from a union with the creed of the pagans; while the barbarous intolerance of the Tatars furnished a further motive to array the priests against the enemies of their religion and their country. They knew that in the grand princedom resided the sole power by which the Tatars were ultimately to be driven out of the land; they saw that to arm that power with sufficient means it was necessary to enrich its treasury, to enlarge its bounds, and to attract within the circle of its sway the allegiance of the whole of the Russian principalities; they perceived in the civil commotions that oppressed the empire a constant source of internal weakness, and they dedicated their energies and their influence to the one object of rendering the grand prince supreme. Mohammedanism assailed them on the one hand, and the papal church on the other: they wanted a rallying point of resistance against both; and they could only find it in the elevation of the throne to an imperial height. Hence, the clergy supported the principle of legitimacy, which by its consistency and perpetuity was calculated to promote the progressive ascension of the princely authority; and thus by degrees, and the inevitable progress of an active doctrine that survived through every obstacle, the church became blended with the state; and the policy of the priesthood, exercising its subtle influence governed and directed the motions of the civil jurisdiction.

CHARACTER AND AIMS OF IVAN

Ivan the Great, favoured by such auspicious dispositions on the part of the clergy, and by the rapid coherence of the principalities, ascended the throne in 1462, at the age of twenty-two. He was a man of great cunning and prudence, and was remarkable for indomitable perseverance, which carried him triumphantly to the conclusions of his designs in a spirit of utter indifference to the ruin or bad faith that tracked his progress. Such a man alone, who was prepared to sacrifice the scruples of honour and the demands of justice, was fit to meet the difficulties by which the grand princedom was surrounded. He saw them all clearly, resolved upon the course he should take; and throughout a long reign, in which the paramount ambition of rendering Russia independent and the throne supreme was the leading feature of his policy, he pursued his plans with undeviating consistency. But that policy was not to be accomplished by open and responsible acts. The whole character of Ivan was tinged with the duplicity of the churchmen who held so high a place in his councils. His proceedings were neither direct, nor at first apparently conducive to the interests of the empire; but the great cause was secretly advancing against all impediments. While he forbore to risk his advantages, he left an opportunity for disunion amongst his enemies, by which he was certain to gain in the end. He never committed himself to a position of the security of which he was not sure; and he carried this spirit of caution to such an extremity that many of the early years of his reign present a succession of timid and vacillating movements, that more nearly resemble the subterfuges of a coward than the crafty artifices of a despot.

[1467-1472 A.D.]

The objects of which he never lost sight were, to free himself from enemies abroad, and to convert the princedom at home into an autocracy. So extensive a design could not have been effected by mere force of arms, for he had so many domestic and foreign foes to meet at once, and so many points of attack and defence to cover, that it was impossible to conduct so grand a project by military means alone. That which he could not effect, therefore, by the sword, he endeavoured to perform by diplomatic intrigue; and thus, between the occasional victories of his armies, and the still more powerful influence of his subtle policy, he reduced his foes, and raised himself to an eminence to which none of his most ambitious predecessors had aspired.

The powers against whom he had to wage this double war of arms and diplomacy were the Tatars and Lithuanians, beyond the frontier; and the independent republics of Novgorod, Viatka, and Pskov, and the princes of the yet unsettled appanages within. The means he had at his command were fully sufficient to have enabled him to subdue those princes of the blood who exhibited faint signs of discontent in their appanages, and who could have been easily reached through the widely diffused agency of the boyars; but the obstinate republics of the north were more difficult of access. They stood boldly upon their independence, and every attempt to reduce them was followed by as fierce a resistance, and by such a lavish outlay of the wealth which their commercial advantages had enabled them to amass, that the task was one of extraordinary difficulty. Kazan, too, the first and greatest of the Tatar cities, claimed a sovereignty over the republics, which Ivan was afraid to contest, lest that which was but a vague and empty claim might end in confirmed authority. It was better to permit the insolent republicans to maintain their entire freedom, than to hazard by indiscretion their transference to the hands of those Tatars who were loosened from the parent stock.

His first act, therefore, was to acknowledge, directly or indirectly, according to the nature of their different tenures, the rights of all his foes within and without. He appeared to admit the justice of things as he found them; betrayed his foreign enemies into a confidential reliance upon his acquiescence in their exactions; and even yielded without a murmur to an abuse of those pretensions to which he affected to submit, but which he was secretly resolved to annihilate. This plausible conformity procured him time to prepare and mature his designs; and so insidiously did he pursue his purpose, that he extended that time by a servility which nearly forfeited the attachment of the people. The immediate object of consideration was obviously the Golden Horde, because all the princes and republics, and even the Poles and Lithuanians, were interested in any movement that was calculated to embarrass the common enemy. Ivan’s policy was to unite as many of his enemies as he could against a single one, and finally to subdue them all by the aid of each other. Had he ventured upon any less certain course, he must have risked a similar combination against himself. He began by withholding the ordinary tribute from the khan, but without exhibiting any symptoms of inallegiance. He merely evaded the tax, while he acknowledged the right; and his dissimulation succeeded in blinding the Tatar, who still believed that he held the grand prince as a tributary, although he did not receive his tribute. The khan, completely deceived, not only permitted this recusancy to escape with impunity, but was further prevailed upon to withdraw the Tatar residents, and their retinues, and the Tatar merchants, who dwelt in Moscow, and who infested with the haughty bearing of masters even the avenues of the Kremlin.[g]

IVAN VASILIEVITCH MARRIES THE GREEK PRINCESS SOPHIA (1472 A.D.)

[1472 A.D.]

By completing the work of his predecessors in destroying the independence of the townships and the appanaged princes, Ivan created the empire of Moscow. The form of government of this empire and all the outward surroundings of power were greatly influenced by the marriage of Ivan to Sophia, daughter of Thomas Palæologus, and niece of the last emperor of Byzantium, who brought to Moscow the customs and traditions of the Byzantine Empire. Ivan had lost his first wife in 1467, and two years later the question arose of his marriage with the Greek princess. Thomas Palæologus had retired with his family to Rome; the idea of finding a bridegroom for his daughter belongs to the Greek vissarion, one of the most zealous partisans of the union and at that time cardinal. The cardinal and pope had naturally in view the finding of a new champion against the then terrible Turks, and at the same time of bringing Russia into the union. The envoy sent to Moscow was a Greek by the name of Iuri, who said that Sophia had several suitors, whom she had refused because she did not wish to enter the Latin church. Ivan, after taking counsel with his mother and boyars, sent to Rome Karl Friazin (whose brother Ivan had been coiner of money at the court of Moscow) to see the bride and confer with the pope; the latter gave his consent and required that boyars should be sent from Moscow to fetch the bride; Friazin was sent for the bride and carried on the negotiations; finally in June, 1472, Sophia, accompanied by the papal legate, left Rome. She was met with honours at Pskov in November of the same year, and was afterwards greeted with like homage at Novgorod. When Sophia was drawing near Moscow, warm disputes arose in the grand prince’s council as to whether it could be allowed that a Latin crucifix should be carried before the legate. The metropolitan declared that in the event of it being permitted, the pope’s legate should enter by one gate and he at another: it is unbecoming to us to hear of such a thing, not to say witness it, for he who shows honour and love to another religion offends his own; finally the legate had to enter without the crucifix. On the day of the entry the marriage ceremony took place (November 12), after which the legate presented his credentials and entered into a controversy with the metropolitan Philip, who called to his aid the scribe Nikita Popovitch. The chronicler says that being in despair of getting the better of the Russian scribes, the legate gave up the controversy, saying that he had no books with him.[b]

The marriage of the sovereign of Moscow with the Greek princess was an event of great importance in Russian history. Properly speaking, an alliance with the Byzantine emperors was not a novelty, and such marriages, excepting the first of them—that of St. Vladimir—had no important consequences and changed nothing essential in Russian life. But the marriage of Ivan with Sophia was concluded under peculiar circumstances. In the first place, his bride did not come from Greece, but from Italy, and her marriage opened the way to intercourse between Muscovite Russia and the west. In the second place, the empire of Byzantium had ceased to exist, and the customs, political conceptions, the manners and ceremonies of court life, deprived of their original soil, sought a fresh field and found it in a country of a like faith—Russia. As long as Byzantium had existed, although Russia adopted her entire ecclesiastical system, yet in political respects she had always remained purely Russian, and the Greeks had no inclination to transform Russia into a Byzantium; now, however, that Byzantium no longer existed, the idea arose that Greece ought to re-incarnate herself in Russia and that the Russian monarchy ought to be a continuation by right of succession of Byzantium, in the same degree as the Russian Church was by order of succession bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of the Greek church. It happened opportunely that eastern Russia had freed herself from the subjugation of the Tatars precisely at the time when Byzantium was enslaved by the Turks, and there arose the hope that the youthful Russian monarchy, strengthened and consolidated, would become the chief mover in the liberation of Greece.

The marriage of Sophia with the Russian grand prince thus acquired the signification of a transfer of the hereditary rights of the descendants of Palæologus to the ruling house of Russia. It is true that Sophia had brothers who had otherwise disposed of their hereditary rights; one of them, Manuel, had submitted to the Turkish sultan, another, Andrew, had twice visited Moscow, but had not stayed there long, and had gone to Italy and sold his hereditary rights, first to the French king Charles VIII, and afterwards to the Spanish Ferdinand the Catholic. But in the eyes of the orthodox a transfer of the rights of the Byzantine monarchs to Catholic kings could not be regarded as lawful; and such being the case a far greater right was represented by Sophia, who had remained faithful to orthodoxy, who was the wife of an orthodox sovereign, who must become and did become the mother and ancestress of his successors, and who during her lifetime earned the reproaches of the pope and his partisans, who had been greatly mistaken in counting on her mediation to bring Muscovite Russia into the Florentine union.

THE GROWTH OF AUTOCRACY

The first visible and outward sign of the fact that Russia came to regard herself as a successor to Greece, was the adoption of the two-headed eagle, the arms of the eastern Roman Empire, which thenceforth became the arms of Russia. From that time much in Russia was changed and assumed a Byzantine likeness; the change was not effected suddenly, but proceeded during the entire reign of Ivan Vasilievitch and continued after his death. In the court household the high-sounding title of czar was introduced, and the custom of kissing the monarch’s hand. Court ranks were established also: master of the stables, master of the horse, and chamberlains (the latter, however, appeared only at the end of Ivan’s reign). The importance of the boyars as the highest class of society fell before an autocratic sovereign; all became equal, all alike were his slaves. The honourable appellation of boyar was bestowed by the grand prince as a reward for services; besides the boyars there was also created a somewhat lower rank—that of the Iokolnitchi[24]—the commencement of the Russian hierarchy of ranks. To the time of Ivan Vasilievitch may also be attributed the establishment of bureaus (prikazi) with their secretaries and clerks. But most important and essential of all was the change in the dignity attaching to the grand prince, strongly to be felt and clearly visible in the actions of the deliberate Ivan Vasilievitch; the grand prince had become an autocratic sovereign. Even in his predecessors do we notice an approximation to this, but the first autocrat in the full sense of the word was Ivan Vasilievitch, and he became so especially after his marriage to Sophia. From that time all his activity was consistently and unswervingly consecrated to the strengthening of monarchy and autocracy.[c]

SUBJUGATION OF THE REPUBLICS

From the beginning of Ivan’s reign there was no change in political policy; the old system of the gradual annihilation of the independent republican communities and appanaged princes continued, as well as the old waiting policy in regard to the Tatars, which was based on the exploitation of their internecine quarrels. Vasili had already prepared to deal the final blow to Novgorod, but had been prevented by the interference of Archbishop Jonas; and the inhabitants, remembering this, were in expectation of fresh action on the part of Moscow and sought support from other quarters. Such support could at that time be afforded them only by the grand prince of Lithuania, but it was difficult for the people of Novgorod to enter into relations with him, because such relations would have the signification of a betrayal of orthodoxy. This being well understood at Moscow, the rulers there hastened to forestall the danger: the grand prince wrote a letter to Archbishop Jonas, declaring to him that the Lithuanian metropolitan Gregory was a disciple of Isidore and a defender of the “unia,” and that relations with him must not be entered into. In order to support the right on his side, the metropolitan of Moscow in the interests of Novgorod rejected the solicitations of the people of Pskov who wished to have a separate bishop; the grand prince himself left unheeded the insults shown to men of Moscow in Novgorod, and even the infringement of his ancient princely rights. Occupied in a war with Kazan, he only exchanged embassies with Novgorod.

[1475 A.D.]

Meanwhile the party in Novgorod which was hostile to Moscow became more and more rampant; the leaders of this party were the Boretski, the children of the dead burgomaster (posadnick). They were incited by their mother Martha, who as an “honourable widow” enjoyed great esteem; the Boretski were wealthy and had great influence in the vetché. At their instigation Prince Michael Olelkovitch, brother of Simon, prince of Kiev, was invited to come from Lithuania to Novgorod. Previously the Lithuanian princes that had been called upon to serve Novgorod had lived together with the Muscovite lieutenants; now the question was already different and the Lithuanian party decided to go further. At the end of 1470 Jonas died and the question was raised in the vetché of having the archbishop nominated in Lithuania; this time, however, the archbishop Theophilus was chosen and his partisans stood out for his consecration in Moscow and were successful, so that a consent to his passing through was obtained from the grand prince. An ambassador coming from Pskov with the news that the grand prince called the men of Pskov upon Novgorod, and offering proposals of mediation, again gave preponderance to the Lithuanian party. The vetché assembled, and people in it began to cry out: “We are free men of great Novgorod and the grand prince of Moscow does us many wrongs and much injustice; we are for the king of Poland;” with the help of the “wicked peasants of the vetché” they gained the victory, and an embassy was sent to Casimir, the result of which was a convention for the submission of Novgorod to him. Olelkovitch soon left Novgorod, having wronged the provinces of Novgorod in various ways. The grand prince still wished to try peaceful measures and sent his ambassador to Novgorod with an exhortation, and the metropolitan Philip sent a letter of admonishment. After the failure of this embassy the grand prince assembled his council (douma) and proposed the question: Shall we march on Novgorod now or wait until winter? It was well known that a march to Novgorod in summer was very difficult, yet it was decided to go at once, and a declaration of war was sent. In July, 1471, the grand prince himself with troops from Moscow and Tver, and accompanied by his brothers, set out from Moscow; the men of Pskov joined the Moscow troops on the way. A religious character was given to the expedition. Before starting, the grand prince went to pray in the cathedral of Moscow, and chroniclers liken this expedition to that of Gideon against the Midianites and that of Dmitri against Mamai.

After the battle at Tskorost, Prince Kholmski, a voyevod of Ivan, decisively defeated the people of Novgorod at the river Shelon (July 14th, 1475?) and the same day the Moscow voyevod Obrazets defeated Prince Vasili Shuiski, who was in the service of Novgorod, at the river Shilenga, and subjugated all the Dvinsk territories; “everywhere the Lord God helped the grand prince to defend his rights.” Nothing remained for Novgorod but to submit, for Casimir, occupied with his own affairs, had not come to her defence. Ivan, coming after his armies, first had Boretski and three other prisoners put to death, then he relented, accepted the petition of Theophilus which was supported by a letter from the metropolitan, took a ransom of 15,500 roubles from Novgorod, and concluded a treaty by which the inhabitants were bound not to be subject to Lithuania and to have their archbishop nominated at Moscow.

[1477-1479 A.D.]

In October, 1475, Ivan visited Novgorod and remained there until February, 1476. Received with honours and gifts by great Novgorod and her dignitaries, the grand prince administered justice as of old; the Slavnovski and Nikitinski appeared with a complaint against the honourable burgomaster (posadnick), Vasili Annanin, and nineteen other boyars who had attacked and robbed them; a similar complaint was brought by the boyars Ponarin against other boyars who had made incursions into their lands and robbed them; for such incursions were of very frequent occurrence in Novgorod. Ivan sent the guilty persons to be imprisoned in Moscow, observing in his judgment all the ancient forms, and requiring that with his commissaries there should also be sent commissaries from Novgorod; it was also then that he allowed the authorities of Novgorod to conclude, as in ancient times, a treaty with Sweden. In 1477 complainants from Novgorod came to Moscow; “Such a thing,” says the chronicle, “had never happened before since the beginning of Novgorod and since it began to have grand princes from the house of Rurik.” Their coming was quite comprehensible; the smaller folk were persuaded that it was only by appealing to the tribunal of the grand prince that they could obtain redress against the greater, and therefore they had recourse to him. Such a result having been attained, it only remained to await the first pretext in order to put an end to the independence of Novgorod. The occasion soon presented itself; in 1477 the envoys from the bishop and from all Novgorod, Nazar of Podvoiski and Zacharias, the secretary of the vetché, called Ivan and his son, young Ivan, gospodá and not lords,[25] as had always been previously done, and the grand prince sent ambassadors to Novgorod to demand the confirmation of this title. Tumults, brawls, and even murder took place in Novgorod, and the ambassador was sent away with an insulting message. Then Ivan assembled his troops to go against Novgorod; he called upon Tver and Pskov for aid, ordered his brothers to assemble, and sending before him the Tatar prince, Daniar Kasimovitch, he set out himself. The people of Novgorod began to negotiate while the grand prince was still on the way; they had even tried to do so before, but Ivan, properly calculating that a satisfactory result could only be obtained by a warlike demonstration, avoided negotiations. All December, 1477, and the beginning of January, 1478, passed in negotiations; finally Novgorod submitted when her defender, Prince Vasili Shuiski, bent his knee[26] before Ivan and refused to serve Novgorod any longer. Novgorod submitted to the “entire will” of Ivan; the vetché was abolished and its great bell taken to Moscow to ring with other bells; estates were taken from the monasteries, and allotted to the grand prince, the first example of secularisation: till then the princes had not possessed estates in Novgorod. When he left, Ivan took with him the boyars and Martha Boretski, who is said to have died at Staritza.

It is reported that in 1479 Novgorod again tried to enter into relations with Casimir, and taking advantage of threatening danger from the Golden Horde, re-established the ancient form of government, and that the grand prince came to the town, ordered the gates to be opened, frustrated the attempt at the very beginning, and took away many of the inhabitants with him. This account is confirmed by the fact that other chronicles speak of the arrival of the grand prince at Novgorod, and of the imprisonment of the archbishop Theophilus. The loss of their independence was a heavy blow to the people, and as a consolation legends were composed of the foolishness of the first bishop sent from Moscow, Sergius by name, and of the flame that came out of the tomb of St. Bartholomew of Khoutinski and burned the feet of the grand prince.

Viatka, whose inhabitants refused to help the Moscow troops in the war against Kazan in 1469, was definitively subdued in 1489. The policy of the transfer of the natives to the ancient provinces and of sending others to take their places, was also applied to Viatka.

Pskov remained submissive and thereby preserved a shadow of independence; but the grand prince kept a zealous watch over all that was done there and did not allow any aspirations to greater independence. Although consenting that the inhabitants might ask for any prince they wished, he did not approve of any wilful change of princes, and strongly took the part of Prince Iaroslav Obolenski, who had had a quarrel with Pskov and whom the people wished to get rid of; it was only the desire to have done with Novgorod that induced the grand prince to give way to Pskov and give them a new lieutenant—Prince Vasili Shuiski (1477). When, later, Ivan named his son Vasili grand prince of Novgorod and Pskov, the inhabitants sent an envoy begging that they might be separated, but the grand prince replied wrathfully that he would give the principality to whomsoever he liked; Pskov also endeavoured in vain to get its province separated from the rule of the bishop of Novgorod.

[1482-1485 A.D.]

Towards the appanaged princes Ivan pursued the same policy as towards the townships. Vasili, prince of Riazan, had already been taken by Vasili the Dark to be educated in Moscow; in 1464 he was sent back to Riazan, returned to Moscow, married a sister of the grand prince and went back to Riazan. He died in 1483, leaving two sons: Ivan and Theodore. Ivan, as grand prince, concluded a treaty with Moscow by which he was placed on a level with the brother of the grand prince of Moscow, Andrew Vasilievitch. In 1496 a treaty was concluded between the brothers, by which the younger was bound, in case he were to die childless, to leave his share to his elder brother; but Prince Theodore survived his brother and bequeathed his share to the grand prince of Moscow. In the year 1500 Ivan, grand prince of Riazan, died, leaving a young son under the guardianship of his mother and grandmother, who were entirely subservient to the prince of Moscow.

Since 1461 the prince of Tver, Michael Borisovitch, was Ivan’s brother-in-law. When he came to the throne Ivan concluded a treaty with him, but although Michael helped Ivan against Novgorod, yet in their mutual relations the signs that usually preceded the fall of a separate principality might be observed. In 1476 certain boyars of Tver went over to Moscow. In 1484 it became known in Moscow that the prince of Tver had concluded a treaty with Casimir and married his granddaughter. Ivan sent troops to lay waste the districts around Tver; Michael hastened to appease him and concluded a new treaty with him, by which the prince of Tver was placed on a level with the second brother of the Moscow grand prince and bound himself not to appeal to Lithuania without his consent. Meanwhile the departure of the boyars from Tver continued and Ivan encouraged them by his policy; in the event of frontier disputes, if the men of Tver were injured they could not obtain justice, but if those of Moscow were injured, Ivan rigorously demanded satisfaction. Michael entered into relations with Casimir, but the envoy was seized, and Ivan sent his troops to Tver; the town surrendered, and Michael fled to Lithuania. In 1463 the princes of Iaroslav ceded their domain to the Muscovite monarch, and in 1474 the princes of Rostov, who ruled over only half of Rostov, for the other half had already been acquired by Kalita, sold their half to the grand prince. Equally slowly and gradually did the grand prince also crush the appanaged princes of Moscow; all these princes were his brothers, with the exception of Michael Andreevitch Vereiski (the son of Andrew Dmitrievitch, brother of Ivan of Mozhaisk). With Michael Ivan concluded several treaties that gradually cut down his rights; finally by the treaty of 1482 Michael ceded, after his death, Belozero to the grand prince. There was no pretext for this annexation, but one was soon found; desiring to make a present to his daughter-in-law Helen[27] (upon the occasion of the birth of his grandson Dmitri) of the ornaments that had belonged to his first wife, Ivan learned that the grand princess Sophia had given away much to her niece, who was married to a son of Michael named Vasili; the irritated grand prince then ordered Vasili to be seized, but he fled to Lithuania; whereupon Ivan took Vereia from Michael and only returned it to him as a possession for life. Michael Andreevitch died in 1485, leaving his domains by will to the grand prince. The appanages of the brothers also little by little, for one reason or another, were joined to the grand principality; in 1472 Iuri Vasilievitch, of Dmitriev, died, without leaving any testamentary disposition of his territory; the grand prince took possession of it; the brothers were angered, but satisfying them with some provinces, the grand prince concluded a treaty with two of them, Andrew of Uglitch and Boris of Volotsk, by which they recognised the priority of their nephew Ivan the Younger and renounced the succession after their brother.

In 1480 the younger brothers again rose against the elder, and Prince Obolenski Liko went from Moscow to enter the service of Boris; Ivan, probably learning of his brother’s relations with the people of Novgorod, ordered Prince Obolenski to be seized at the court of Boris. The princes went to Rzhev, thence to the boundary of Lithuania, and entered into relations with Casimir, who however did not help them. Until then they had rejected negotiations, but seeing Casimir’s inaction, they asked for the intercession of their mother, but Ivan refused them; they also sought support in Pskov, but were unsuccessful. The invasion of Ahmed induced Ivan to make peace with his brothers, and Andrew received a part of the appanage of Iuriev. Andrew the younger died in 1481, leaving his domain to the grand prince. In 1484 the mother of the grand prince, who had in some degree restrained the dissensions of the brothers, died, and in 1486 Ivan bound his brothers by a new treaty to renounce their rights of inheritance in regard to appanages. In 1491 Andrew was seized and thrown into prison, where he died in 1494; his sons were imprisoned with him. Boris also died soon after, leaving his domains to his sons Theodore and Ivan: the latter, dying in 1504, left his part by will to the grand prince, whom he calls “gossudar”[28] (sovereign or sire).

THE FINAL OVERTHROW OF THE TATARS

The most conspicuous event in the reign of Ivan—the casting off of the Tatar yoke—is connected by many with his marriage. But it should be borne in mind that this was the ancient and sacred ideal of the Moscow princes, to the fulfilment of which all their desires had long been directed, and for which they had been gradually preparing the means. Such an event cannot be explained by one merely accidental circumstance, although it is impossible not to agree that the dependence of her husband upon the Tatar khan must have been humiliating to the proud Sophia, and therefore it cannot be denied that there is some truth in the traditions relating to this subject. But in any event the circumstance was a merely accessory one, for it is known that long before this the expression: “May the Lord cause the horde to perish,” was to be met with in the wills of the Moscow princes; the same expression also occurs in the testament of Vasili the Dark. The Moscow princes had prepared for this by taking into their service Tatar princes, in whom they saw the best means of fighting their enemies, the Tatars. And in this work bequeathed to him by his forefathers, Ivan Vasilievitch remained true to the deliberate, persistent policy of his predecessors, never losing sight of his aim, but never hurrying too much in its attainment.

At the time when Ivan Vasilievitch began to reign, the Tatar horde no longer constituted an undivided kingdom; previously it had been sometimes divided and then again reunited, but at this period it was definitively divided into three chief hordes; the Golden, the Kazanese, and the Crimean, at the head of the last of which, during the reign of Vasili the Dark, was Azi Girai.

Ivan’s policy consisted in exploiting one horde against the other and one pretender against the other. Of the principal Tatar hordes, the nearest and weakest was the Kazan horde, and it was the first which he attempted to bring under his influence. In 1467 the vassal Kasim, who was in the service of Ivan, was invited by some of the Tatar princes (mourzas) to come to Kazan, but the khan Ibrahim met him at the Volga and prevented him from crossing the river; after insignificant mutual devastations in 1469 a great army was sent against Kazan, composed of sons of the boyars and Moscow troops, under the leadership of Constantine Bezzubtiev. The troops marched right up to the town, but beyond ravaging its territory nothing was done. In the summer of the same year, two of the grand prince’s brothers, Iuri and Andrew the Big, marched against Kazan, besieged the town, and Ibrahim hastened to conclude peace “at the entire will of the grand prince and his voyevods,” and liberated the prisoners that had been taken during the preceding forty years. For eight years there was peace, but in 1479 the Kazanese army made a raid on Russian territory (at Ustiug and Viatka). To avenge this, troops were sent from Moscow under the leadership of the voyevod Vasili Obrazets, while from the other side came the men of Viatka and Ustiug and besieged Kazan. Ibrahim again concluded peace “according to the will of the grand prince.” At the death of Ibrahim disturbances arose in Kazan; one of his sons Ali Khan or Alegam, from the younger wife, became khan, and Muhammed Amin, the son of the elder wife, came to Moscow and asked for help against his brother.

[1487 A.D.]

In 1487 troops were despatched from Moscow under the leadership of Daniel Kholmski, the town was taken, Alegam made prisoner, and Muhammed Amin established on the throne of Kazan; he was so entirely subject to Moscow that he asked the grand prince’s permission to marry, and even paid a certain tribute to Moscow. In 1496 the people of Kazan, dissatisfied with Muhammed Amin, called in the Nogaians; the Moscow troops came to the aid of the khan, but hardly had they been dismissed before the Nogaian prince Mamuk came to Kazan, and the khan fled to Moscow. Mamuk, fearing treason, seized the very persons who had called for him, and in general began to act arbitrarily. When he went to attack the princes of Arsk, the inhabitants of Kazan shut the gates against him and sent to Moscow to ask for another khan, only not Muhammed Amin. Ivan sent them Muhammed’s brother, Abdul Letiv, and gave to the former Koshira and Serpukhov as fiefs. In 1502, at the complaint of the people of Kazan, Abdul Letiv was deposed and banished to Belozero. Muhammed Amin again returned, but he was already dissatisfied with Moscow, and in this attitude he was supported by his wife, the widow of Alegam. In 1505, under the pretext that the grand prince had not satisfied his complaints, Muhammed Amin plundered some Russian merchants that had come to the fair and marched against Nijni-Novgorod; Ivan died soon after, before he was able to revenge himself.

The extension of the Russian possessions in the east was accomplished in another way; in 1472 the grand prince sent troops to the territory of Perm—which was numbered amongst the Novgorodian possessions—and its prince was taken prisoner; but until 1505 native princes were left to reign there, and it was only in that year that Prince Vasili Kover was sent to Perm as lieutenant. The continual incursions of the Voguls obliged Ivan to send troops to the Ugrian territory and Prince Kurbski even crossed the Ural. While leaving there native princes, Ivan nevertheless included the lands of Perm and Ugria in his title. With the Golden Horde Ivan did not begin war, although from the very beginning he did not pay tribute punctually. Ivan’s enemy, the grand prince of Lithuania, incited the Tatars against Moscow, and in 1471 Casimir called upon Ahmed to rise against the grand prince of Moscow; Ahmed however took a whole year to assemble his troops, and meanwhile during the migration of the Tatars from Sarai, which took place every summer, the people of Viatka came and plundered it. In 1472 Ahmed at last assembled his troops and took Alexin, but on meeting the grand prince’s brothers with a strong army at the river Oka, he decided not to go further.

After this, until 1480, the relations with the Golden Horde remained indefinite. Meanwhile intercourse was established with the Crimean horde. Azi Girai died in 1467, and his son Nordovlat succeeded him, but he was deposed by his brother Mengli Girai, and sought a refuge with Casimir. Ivan hastened to enter into relations with Mengli Girai through the intermediation of a Jew of Feodosia, named Kokos; Mengli Girai, without breaking with Casimir, hastened to affirm these relations, which, however, were not very profitable, on account of the disturbances in the Crimea: the overthrow of Mengli Girai, by Aidar, the taking of Feodosia by the Turks, and the consequent destruction of the power of the Genoese in the Crimea; the capture of Mengli Girai and his liberation on the condition of his becoming a Turkish tributary; the devastation of the Crimea by the son of Ahmed, and the rise of the czarevitch Zenebek to the supreme power. It was only in 1479 that Mengli Girai finally established himself in the Crimea and that his constant relations with Moscow commenced.[29]

In 1480 the khan of the Golden Horde, Ahmed, incited by Casimir of Lithuania, prepared to march against Russia. It is reported that about that time Ivan refused to pay tribute, and that Sophia persuaded Ivan not to go out to meet the Tatar envoys under the pretext of illness, and also by her cunning managed to destroy the hospice of the Tatars in the Kremlin; it is said that she wrote to the wife of the khan telling her that she had had a vision in which she had been commanded to build a church upon the very same site, and that the wife of the khan, who was bribed with presents, managed to arrange the matter, and when the envoys came there was no resting place to be found for them in Moscow. However this may be, it is certain that Ivan ceased to pay tribute. When he heard of Ahmed’s coming Ivan took up his position on the banks of the Oka, where he remained encamped from July until September; Ahmed being informed that the passage was here occupied, passed through the territories of Lithuania and came to the Ugra, but here he also found the passages occupied. The two armies remained in this position until November, and in the camp of the grand prince councils were held as to what should be done, for two parties had arisen, the one proposing to offer a ransom, while the other was for fighting; the famous letter of Archbishop Vassain of Moscow was written in the latter spirit. The grand prince was sometimes at Kolomna and sometimes at Moscow to consult with the metropolitan. When the frosts set in, by which the Tatars greatly suffered, the grand prince commanded the Russians to fall back on Kremenets, and meanwhile the Tatars fled.[30] Soon after his return to Sarai, Ahmed was killed by Ivak, prince of the Nogaian Tatars; and Mengli Girai delivered Russia from the sons of Ahmed, with whom he was constantly at war.

The relations with the Crimea, which were of importance in the struggle against the Golden Horde, were also of importance in the conflict with Lithuania, and therefore Ivan constantly maintained them; but zealously looked after his own interests. Of course many presents had to be given to the Tatars of the Crimea, although Ivan was economical to such a degree that when sheep were given to the envoys he required the skins to be returned; but he spent his wealth all the more willingly for this object, because Lithuania on her side also endeavoured to bribe the horde, and a regular auction went on in the Crimea. The conquest of Feodosia by the Turks made it necessary for the Russians to enter into relations with them for commercial reasons.

AFFAIRS OF LITHUANIA

[1494-1495 A.D.]

The friendship of Mengli Girai, which had been of value to Ivan in his conflicts with the Tatars, was of still greater importance in his dealings with Lithuania: Casimir, occupied with matters in the west, principally the establishment of his son on the throne of Bohemia, had incited both the inhabitants of Novgorod and the Golden Horde against Ivan, while Ivan on his side had instigated Mengli Girai against Lithuania and carried on relations with Casimir’s enemy, the king of Hungary, Matthias (I) Corvinus. The quarrels of the border princes serving in the various armies, and their passing into the service of the Muscovite sovereign, served as the chief pretext for dissatisfaction. The grand prince of Moscow, taking advantage of the fact that in the treaty concluded between Vasili Vasilievitch and Casimir, the subject of the princes had been treated very vaguely, began to receive those that passed into his service. Thus he received together with their domains Prince I. M. Vorotinski, Prince I. V. Bielski, and Prince D. Th. Vorotinski. The complaints at their desertions, the quarrels of the border princes, and in general, the frontier disagreements, were a continual subject of friction, which occasionally went as far as slight skirmishes. In 1492 Casimir died, and Lithuania chose as king his son Alexander, while Poland took as king his other son John. Ivan again roused Mengli Girai against Lithuania and sent detachments of his troops to lay waste the frontiers. Propositions of peace were sent from Lithuania and negotiations for a marriage with one of the daughters of Ivan were entered upon. In Moscow it was insisted that the negotiations for peace should precede those for marriage. Meanwhile more princes passed into the Russian service: two more princes Vorotinski, Prince Mezetski and Prince Viazemski; the frontier incursions also continued. Finally in 1494 Alexander sent his ambassadors to open negotiations both for peace and for the marriage. The treaty concluded by them recognised the passing of the princes into Ivan’s service, and what was of even greater importance, Ivan was therein called sovereign of all Russia. Ivan then gave his consent to the marriage of his daughter Helen with the grand prince of Lithuania, Alexander, stipulating however that a promise in writing should be given that Helen would not be constrained to change her religion. When all this was concluded, in 1495 Ivan sent Helen to Lithuania, giving her detailed instructions. At the celebration of the marriage ceremony the Russian ambassadors insisted that the ceremony should also be celebrated by an orthodox priest. But even from the very beginning it was manifest that seeds of discord lay hidden in this alliance. Alexander refused to build an orthodox church at his court, the boyars from Moscow who were with Helen were soon sent back, and finally Alexander ceased to give Ivan the title of sovereign of all Russia. The dissatisfaction grew, so that Ivan wrote to Mengli Girai: “If Alexander makes peace with you now, let us know if he does not, also let us know, and we are with you, our brother.” More princes passed into the service of the grand prince of Moscow, amongst them Prince Simon Bielski, who asserted that persecutions against orthodoxy had commenced in Lithuania, and accused the bishop of Smolensk, Joseph, of co-operating with the Latins; Prince Simon Ivanovitch (son of Ivan of Mozhaisk) with Tchernigov, and Prince Vasili Ivanovitch (a grandson of Shemiaka) with Novgorod Severski also came over (1499). Ivan sent Alexander a declaration of war; which began with incursions of the vassal princes, and on the 14th of July, 1500, Prince Daniel Kholmski, who led the troops of Tver and Moscow, and the vassal Tatars and princes, met the Lithuanian hetman Prince Constantine, defeated him, and took him prisoner; on the other hand the grand prince’s son, Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch, was unable to take Smolensk, and in general during four years warlike action proceeded very feebly. Diplomatic intrigue was however carried on with great activity; Moscow incited Mengli Girai against Lithuania, who sent his sons to devastate Lithuania and Poland, in spite of tempting offers from Alexander.

[1495-1503 A.D.]

Stephen of Moldavia, however, hearing of the disgrace and abandonment into which his daughter Helen (widow of Ivan’s son) had fallen at the court of Moscow, made peace with Alexander; his enmity however did not express itself in any important act. Far more important was the help given to Alexander by the Livonian grand master Plettenberg. Notwithstanding the truce which had been concluded, the continual collisions between the Livonians and the inhabitants of Pskov did not cease. To avenge one of these incursions, Ivan sent twenty thousand troops to Livonia who laid waste the land, captured towns, and carried away prisoners. A fresh truce was concluded (1482) which was extended in 1493, but the Germans burned a certain Russian in Reval, and in answer to Russian complaints they replied that they would have burned the grand prince himself. This, it is supposed, explains the order given in 1495 to expel the Hanseatic merchants and close their shops; but perhaps it is more probable that the true reason was the treaty concluded with the king of Denmark, the enemy of the Hansa, who had asked for help against the Swedes, promising in the event of success to cede a part of Finland to Russia. Ivan sent an army against Sweden; but when the Danish king took possession of Sweden he gave nothing to Russia. Such being the relations between Russia and Livonia, it was quite natural that the grand master Plettenberg should hasten to conclude an alliance with Lithuania (1501). He defeated the Russians near Izborsk, but did not take the town and turned back, while the Russians continued to ravage Livonia. Plettenberg again entered Russian territory, besieged Pskov, and a battle took place near Lake Smolin, but it was not decisive (1502). Meanwhile Alexander began negotiations for peace, partly through his brothers John (after whose death in 1502 he occupied the throne of Poland) and Vladislav, and partly through embassies. Finally, in 1503, a treaty was concluded by which Russia kept all her acquisitions and Ivan was granted the title of sovereign of all Russia. A truce was then concluded with Livonia.

Relations with the German Empire began under Ivan. They commenced with the visit of the knight Poppel to Moscow; his narratives revealed Russia to Germany and he came as ambassador in 1489. Negotiations were opened for the marriage of one of the grand prince’s daughters with Maximilian, the son of the emperor Frederick; but nothing came of them. The hope that it might be possible to incite the emperor against the Polish king was also frustrated, for Maximilian, who had pretensions to the throne of Hungary, made peace with Vladislav.

LAST YEARS OF IVAN; INHERITANCE LEFT TO HIS SONS

[1505 A.D.]

The last years of Ivan’s life were darkened by dissensions and intrigues in his family. In 1490 died Ivan the Younger, whom Ivan had proclaimed as his co-ruler. Two parties were then formed at the court; the boyars wished to see Dmitri, the son of Ivan the Younger, and Helen of Moldavia recognised as heir; and Sophia designed her son Vasili (born in 1479) to be heir. A plot was laid against Dmitri; the sovereign heard of it, ordered the conspirators to be executed, and was greatly angered with Sophia, because he had been told that she had called in sorcerers to her aid (1497). Ivan then had his grandson crowned as his successor (1498); but soon Sophia again triumphed: a conspiracy was discovered in which were involved the princes Patrikëiev and Riapolovski; Prince Simon Riapolovski was beheaded and the Patrikëievs were forced to take holy orders. It was supposed that the plot had been directed against Sophia. From the first Ivan did not “rejoice in his grandson,” and proclaimed Vasili grand prince of Novgorod and Pskov, and in 1502 he had Dmitri placed under arrest and declared Vasili his successor. The ambassadors to the various courts were given orders to explain these occurrences.

Ivan died on the 27th of October, 1505, leaving a will and testament by which he bequeathed sixty-six of the most important towns to Vasili, and only thirty to his remaining sons (Iuri, Dmitri, Simon, and Andrew); Moscow was divided into parts, Vasili receiving two-thirds and the others one-third in all, but the elder was to have a share even in this third; the younger brothers were commanded to esteem the elder as a father and to leave him their inheritance in the event of their dying childless. Thus were changed the relations of the grand prince to the appanaged princes! In the treaty concluded between the brothers Vasili and Iuri during the lifetime of Ivan, Iuri calls his brother “lord,” and binds himself to hold his principality “honourably and strictly.”

APPRECIATIONS OF IVAN VASILIEVITCH

“He sits at home and sleeps, and his dominions augment, while I fight every day and yet can hardly defend my frontiers.” Such were the words, it is said, with which Stephen of Moldavia frequently characterised his daughter’s father-in-law, the grand prince Ivan Vasilievitch.

The observation is a remarkable one, for it represents the first and most salient feature in the policy of the famous Russian monarch, who in himself concludes one period of Russian history and opens another. Under him Russia passes out of its condition of exclusiveness; the west learns that besides that Russia which is subject to Lithuania, there is already another Russia, independent, powerful, and self-sufficing; it is even possible that at first this power was somewhat exaggerated, but it struck contemporaries because it had, so to say, grown imperceptibly. It would seem that all around it, as if submitting to some fatal influence, hastened to yield to this newborn power, while Russia herself did not hasten to announce herself, but only manifested herself at the last moment when everything was already prepared for this manifestation, and when it only remained to gather the fully ripened fruits.

S. M. Soloviov[h] compares Ivan to the fortunate heir of a long line of careful merchants who, having amassed a considerable capital, provided their heir with the means for carrying on vast enterprises. N. I. Kostomarov’s[c] judgment is still more severe; he denies any merit in Ivan, judges his activity by the requirements of other times and circumstances, and does not recognise in him and his descendants anything beyond their own ambitious and self-interested motives. Such views were probably called forth as a contradiction to Karamzin, who on his part, carried away by his dislike of the violence which—according to him—characterised the reform of Peter, placed Ivan above Peter. The question “Lithuania or Moscow” was raised with entire firmness and determination by Ivan, for by the defence of Helen’s orthodoxy and by receiving into his service the Lithuanian princes who expatriated themselves because of the persecution of orthodoxy, he became the protector of the Greek church in Lithuania and thus strove to gain influence in its internal affairs. The secular policy of Russia was thus marked out; it was also marked out by his insistence on the recognition of his title grand prince of all Russia and by his demand for the restoration of Kiev; intercourse with the west also begins with him.[b]

In war Ivan showed a caution which his enemies called cowardice. As behooved a prince, he conducted everything of importance himself. He exacted strict obedience, and was indefatigable in studying the thoughts and private circumstances of all important men in his kingdom, and even in foreign lands. The whole court and people trembled before his spirit and will; shy women are said to have fainted before his angry and fiery look; seldom, if ever, did a petitioner dare to approach his throne, and none of the nobles at the princely table ventured to say a word to another, or to leave his place, if the ruler, overcome by eating or drinking, happened to fall asleep and remained so for many hours. All the guests sat there dumb until Ivan awoke and gave them further orders, either to amuse or to leave him.

He was by no means prodigal of the life of his warriors; in fact, he expected to gain more from the mistakes of his enemies than others do from battles; and he knew how to incite his enemies into committing mistakes, as well as to make use of them. He had the enlargement of his kingdom as much at heart as his absolute power. He boldly projected many far-seeing plans, and sought with indefatigable zeal to realise them. After he had broken the pride of Novgorod he considered nothing impossible, and regarded his own will as the supreme command. We find no trace of his having been accessible to the petitions of his subjects, or of his granting public audience days for the hearing of their requests and complaints.

Arbitrary power over the common people became stronger and prevailed, and officials abused their power unpunished, for complainants and helpers were wanting. To enlighten the minds of his people through the study of science was not a part of his plans, perhaps because he may have thought that it is easier for the tyrant to rule over rude slaves than over a free-thinking and enlightened people. He must not be denied the merit of having raised great edifices at Moscow by means of foreign, especially Italian, architects; but vanity and love of show probably had more to do with this than artistic sense and taste. The wide and majestic walls of the venerable Kremlin with its battlements and towers, secret underground passages, and fortified gates, were to serve less as objects of beauty than as means of protection against domestic and foreign enemies. Amongst the useful arts he especially favoured those of the cannon founder and silversmith; with the former he desired to terrify his enemies, and with the latter to spread the renown of his power and glory. His greatest services to the Russian state include, besides the regulation of the law code, the increase of the state revenues, partly through the conquest of new provinces, and partly through a better system of taxation, so that the government could collect a treasure for unforeseen emergencies and would become less dependent upon chance.

Thus there can be no doubt that as a prince Ivan ranks high and belongs to the number of those regents who decide the fate of their people and land for many years, and are a blessed or a cursed remembrance to posterity: but neither can it be denied that his greatness and fame lose much when we come to consider him as a man, and see the harshness of his character, his unlimited pride, his contempt of all human rights, his wild and passionate nature, and his greed of power. That he was the founder of autocracy, as modern writers assert, is not altogether his own exclusive merit, although it cannot be denied that he contributed much towards it by his shrewdness and wise moderation. When in the early days of his youth he seized the reins of government, he found much that had been prepared towards the future greatness of Russia; but Russia was still in a chaotic condition, and its forces were scattered and sunk as it were in a lethargy; they required an awakening and regulating hand, and this was principally Ivan’s work. Owing to the unfortunate system of appanages, which had been the ruin of Russia for many centuries, by destroying all unity in course of time, sowing the seeds of discord, and making the Russian state an easy prey to its enemies, the idea of a common fatherland had quite disappeared; and the internal dissensions among the princes, as well as the despotic pressure of the foreign barbarians, had so deranged and disjointed it, that the praiseworthy attempts of individual grand princes could meet with no brilliant success, and it seemed as if Russia were fated to play a deeply subordinate part in the hierarchy of states.

Nevertheless those attempts were not quite lost, and the prudent might surmise that the time would yet come when they would bear fruit, once the hydra of discord had been conquered and the scattered forces had been reunited. Ivan’s proceedings in this respect were certainly of a macchiavellian nature. We have seen that for twenty-three years he patiently acknowledged the rights of other Russian princes and even their independence, and that by keeping his conquests to himself and not sharing them with his brothers and the other princes, and by taking his brother’s inheritance and giving none to his other brothers, he first began to consider himself as autocrat and ruler of all Russia, and thus gradually prepared the princes for a recognition of his undivided sway and their own impotency and subordination.

We do not inquire as to whether the means he used for the attainment of his end deserve our approval; we will only remark that great conquerors and founders of new empires, or such as reorganise and rejuvenate old and decaying states, cannot be judged with the same standard by which wise regents are judged in regulated states. The resort to violent measures is often their highest duty, if they are to persist in their work and arrive at the aim they have imposed on themselves. From a political point of view, Ivan’s harsh proceedings therefore deserve some exculpation, all the more so when we consider that he lived at a time when revolutions of every kind were taking place in the states and their institutions, in the modes of thinking and in the religion of men, in the arts and sciences, the new forms often seeking to supplant the old in a violent manner; and when this change also began in Russia, where intellectual enlightenment was so rare, we should not be surprised to see the forces of brutality often gaining the upper hand over the forces of reason.

We now find ourselves at one of the most important turning points of Russian political history, when by a regulated system of succession and by the incorporation of the independent principalities with the grand principality, the Russian monarchy began to establish itself firmly and to extend its bounds; when the hitherto terrible defiance of over-powerful nobles and of princes who claimed equal rank with the grand prince submits to the restraints of a common obedience; when no more dangers threaten Russia from the side of Novgorod and the Tatars; when a regulated system of taxation, a treasury and an organised army protect the throne; and finally when science and art, the administration of justice, personal safety on the roads and in the towns, besides other blessings of peace and order, also begin to attract attention, protection, and cultivation in Russia.[d]

ACCESSION OF VASILI IVANOVITCH (1505 A.D.)

Vasili Ivanovitch succeeded his father, and continued his policy both in foreign and domestic affairs. He endeavoured to extend the frontiers of the Russian monarchy on the Lithuanian side, destroyed the independence of the last appanaged princes and the last republican township, Pskov, and strove to keep Kazan in subjection.

In his personal character Vasili resembled his father in his sterner aspect. He let his nephew, the unfortunate Dmitri, die “destitute” in prison; over his brothers he maintained a strict surveillance, not allowing his brother Andrew to marry until 1533, when he himself had already two children; with his boyars he was also stern, though there were but few executions and punishments during his reign. He preferred, in case of any suspected intention of departure on the part of a boyar, to take a written guarantee in which the security promised, in the event of departure, to pay a sum of money for those for whom he went bail. Vasili even forgave his brother Simon, who had the intention of going over to Lithuania, and only changed his counsellors. Stern on the occasion of his divorce from his first wife, Vasili was tender towards his second wife, and was very fond of his children. In general the characteristics of Vasili are most faithfully summed up by Karamzin in the following sentence: “He followed the path indicated by the wisdom of his father, without fear, without impulses of passion, moving forward with measured and prudent steps, and drew near to his aim, the aggrandisement of Russia, without leaving to his successor either the duty or the glory of repairing his faults.” In the eyes of the historian this, of course, redeems the personally rather stern sides of his character, which were, however, quite comprehensible to contemporaries.[31]

WARS WITH LITHUANIA

[1506 A.D.]

From the very commencement of his reign Vasili found himself confronted with two questions: that of Kazan—for Muhammed Amin had risen even during the reign of Ivan and had to be subdued—and that of Lithuania. From the ambassadors whom Alexander had sent to Ivan he learned that a new sovereign was now reigning in Moscow. Having given information of this in Livonia, so that in any case the grand master might be prepared, Alexander despatched an embassy to Moscow demanding the cession of the towns that had been conquered by Ivan. The ambassadors received a firm reply from the new sovereign to the effect that he only reigned over his legitimate possessions, which he intended to retain.

Alexander saw the necessity of delay before taking a decisive line of action, of which course he informed the grand master. Meanwhile the ambassadors who had come from Moscow to announce Vasili’s accession to the throne required that Alexander should not constrain his wife to change her religion. But Alexander died in 1506, and when Vasili heard of his death he wrote to his sister that she should endeavour to persuade the Polish lords and landed gentry to serve the Russian sovereign, promising at the same time to protect the Catholic faith. In answer to this first attempt on the part of Moscow to unite with Lithuania, Helen replied that Sigismund, the son of Casimir, was being chosen to the throne of Lithuania. Sigismund also sent ambassadors with the demand to return the conquered towns, and received the same reply demanding that Helen should not be constrained to adopt the Catholic faith. At this time Sigismund found an unexpected ally in the Crimean khan Mengli Girai, who having met with support in Lithuania before the death of Alexander and being dissatisfied with the Muscovite sovereign because of his expedition against Kazan, sent an embassy to Lithuania with proposals for an alliance. Sigismund promised him tribute, and Mengli Girai gave him a yarlik for the Russian territories of Novgorod, Pskov, and Riazan. Sigismund informed the grand master of Livonia of the relations with the Crimea and with Kazan and called upon him to go to war, and measures for the commencement of war were taken in the diet; but this time his allies were of but little assistance to Sigismund; Kazan submitted, while the Crimea and Livonia did not move. On the other hand, Vasili found an important ally in Lithuania itself in the person of Prince Michael Vasilievitch Glinski.

Prince Michael Glinski, the descendant of a Tatar prince that had left the horde during the reign of Vitovt and been baptised, had enjoyed great distinction and influence under Alexander. Glinski was a skilful general and a highly educated man for those times; he had spent twelve years abroad and had learned the art of war in the armies of Albrecht of Saxony during the war in Friesland and of the emperor Maximilian in Italy; he also visited Spain. In these expeditions and in his continual intercourse with western kings and princes, Glinski had adopted all the German customs and had become penetrated with the civilisation of the west. When he returned to Lithuania, Glinski gained the favour and confidence of King Alexander, who raised him to the dignity of court marshal and so increased his possessions that, according to the hyperbolical expression of a Polish historian, he owned almost half of the entire Lithuanian principality and stood at the head of the numerous Russian party amongst the Lithuanian lords. It was for this reason that at the death of Alexander the Lithuanian party hastened to choose Sigismund, for they feared that Glinski might obtain the throne of the grand principality and transfer the centre from Lithuania to Russia.

When Sigismund came to the throne he showed an offensive coldness to Glinski, and paying no attention to his complaints against the lords who were at enmity with him, at the head of whom was Zaberezhsky, he left for Poland. Glinski thereupon decided to obtain satisfaction on his own account; he made an incursion on the estates of Zaberezhsky, killed him, and raised a revolt against the king. To this end he entered into relations with Mengli Girai, and Vasili Ivanovitch, on his side, sent one of his secretaries to propose to him to become the subject of Russia, and promising to leave him the lands which he might occupy. Glinski however still wavered and tried to effect a reconciliation with the king; finally losing all hope of this, he joined the grand prince’s voyevods, who had marched up to the frontiers of Lithuania. To Glinski and the foreign princes in the Russian service was confided the task of devastating Lithuania, but the voyevods did not move to their help, for in Moscow it was counted advantageous to let others do its work. Meanwhile Sigismund sent an embassy, complaining of Glinski’s reception by Vasili and of the opening of hostilities. The letter was written in the name of Helen, and in his reply to her the grand prince directed her attention to the constraint put upon the orthodox in Lithuania and enjoined her to remain firm in her faith. Sigismund received no aid from Mengli Girai, but nevertheless he began warlike operations, which however were limited to insignificant skirmishes. Finally a treaty was concluded by which all Ivan’s acquisitions remained to Russia, and all that had been taken by Glinski was given back (1508). Glinski came to Moscow, where Medin and Maloiaroslavetz were given to him but he remained dissatisfied.

[1508-1514 A.D.]

The peace of 1508 could not however put an end to the inimical relations between the two principalities: Glinski could not remain quiet until he was avenged on his enemies, and Lithuania could not be quiet so long as Glinski lived; while on his side Vasili Ivanovitch demanded better treatment for his sister Helen. Thus the relations between the two neighbouring states were strained. In 1509 Sigismund demanded the surrender or execution of Glinski, accusing him of the death of Alexander; in the same year he announced his connection with the Danish king; it can also be easily understood that each reciprocal embassy complained of frontier quarrels, as is always the case in such circumstances. In 1512 Vasili informed Sigismund that it had come to his ears that the voyevods of Vilna and Trotski had seized Helen and held her captive—which does not appear at all improbable when the unruliness of the Lithuanian lords is borne in mind—Sigismund denied the fact. That Helen officially received various rights, for instance that of a tribute or tax from the town of Bielsk, also does not prove that her position was a very advantageous one, for this was worth nothing more than other official favours. In 1513 Helen died and the metropolitan of Kiev was sent for to officiate at her funeral; thus this victim of political calculations left the scene. Helen herself, as far as can be judged from her correspondence with her father and brother, was possessed of considerable tact and energy.

At last a reason for beginning war presented itself; it became known at Moscow that the incursions made by the Crimeans on the Russian frontier territories in 1512 were the result of a secret treaty that had been concluded between Sigismund and Mengli Girai, by which the king had promised to pay the khan a yearly sum of 15,000 ducats to attack his enemies. Having sent Sigismund a declaration of war, Vasili began his warlike preparations. The time was well chosen. In 1511 Albrecht of Brandenburg had been chosen as Prussian grand master, and although he was a nephew of the Polish king he refused to acknowledge himself as his vassal, which he was obliged to do by the Treaty of Thorn; the emperor and the estates of the empire declared themselves for the grand master. Advised by Glinski, Vasili had entered into relations with the emperor as early as 1508, but the treaty between them was only concluded in 1514.

[1514-1518 A.D.]

Without waiting for the termination of these negotiations, the grand prince assembled an army and in December, 1512, took the field. He marched against Smolensk and having besieged it unsuccessfully, returned in March, 1513. His second expedition, from June until November of the same year, was also unsuccessful, but in the third (June, 1514), Smolensk was at last captured. Vasili made a triumphal entry into the town, being received with an address of welcome by the bishop of Smolensk. He confirmed the rights that had been given to its inhabitants by the Lithuanian government; those in the Lithuanian service who did not desire to remain under him he sent back to Lithuania, and he appointed Prince V. V. Shuiski, governor of Smolensk. After the submission of Smolensk the prince of Mstislavl also submitted to the grand prince. Sigismund himself hastened to the deliverance of Smolensk. Glinski, probably dissatisfied because Smolensk had not been given to him, entered into secret intercourse with him. Learning of this treachery Vasili ordered Glinski to be brought in fetters to Moscow and sent a voyevod against the king; the king himself remained at Borissov and sent Constantine Ostrozhski to meet the Moscow troops.

The Russian voyevods, Tcheliadin and Prince Michael Golitza met Ostrozhski at Orsha on the Dnieper and sustained a terrible defeat. The fidelity of the boyars of Smolensk and of the bishop himself wavered and they entered into communication with Sigismund; but the burghers informed Shuiski of this treachery, and it was only the terribly energetic measures taken by him that preserved Smolensk for Russia: he ordered all the traitors except the bishop to be hanged on the walls of the city, the presents that had been given them by the sovereign to be suspended round the neck of each one. The assault on Smolensk was unsuccessful, and the war was afterward carried on feebly, which is explained by the exhaustion of Moscow after the battle of Orsha and the probable reluctance of the Lithuanian nobility to take an active part in it. After this Sigismund instigated the Tatars against Russia, in particular those of the Crimea, where in 1515 Mengli Girai had been succeeded by Muhammed Girai, who, notwithstanding his relations with Moscow, made in 1517 an attack on Tula and was repulsed. On his side Vasili strengthened his relations with Albrecht who kept his vassal, the grand master of Livonia, in check. However while Albrecht hesitated and demanded money, Vasili required that he should begin to act. The emperor, instead of beginning the war, as had been at first supposed he would do, offered his mediation, and it was with this aim in view that in 1517 the famous baron Sigismund Herberstein came to Moscow. Polish ambassadors also came; but with the news of their coming, Moscow also learned of the attack on Opochka by the Lithuanian troops and their repulse, and when Vasili heard of its failure he allowed the ambassadors access to him. The negotiations however came to nothing. The Moscow sovereign demanded Kiev and other towns, and the Lithuanian king refused to give up Smolensk. The death of Maximilian (1519) put an end to the imperial mediation; anyhow the emperor had not wished to give any real assistance: “It is not well”—he wrote to the grand master Albrecht—“to drive out the king, and make the czar of all Russia great.”

In 1518 Albrecht again asked for money; the grand prince agreed, and at the former’s request sent a notification of his alliance with him to the French king, Francis I—the first instance of intercourse between Russia and France. In answer to a fresh embassy from Albrecht bringing information of an invitation from the pope to join an alliance against the Turks, which Albrecht would not enter into without the grand prince’s consent, an ambassador was sent to Koenigsberg from Moscow, who was received with the highest honours by the grand master. But Albrecht’s help was not very efficacious; he was soon obliged to conclude a treaty with King Sigismund by which he acknowledged himself his vassal, in return for which he obtained Prussia as an hereditary possession, laid aside his title of grand master, and assumed a new title with his new faith, that of duke of Prussia.

[1521-1523 A.D.]

The war at that time was limited to incursions, and Vasili Ivanovitch had even decided to seek peace; but the envoys that came would not make any concessions, only letting negotiations drag on in the hope of some event coming to their assistance; in this manner the war was prolonged until the Lent of 1521, when negotiations were to be again renewed; however they were not opened: in Kazan reigned Sahib Girai, the brother of Muhammed Girai, and they both threatened Moscow, indeed the former advanced as far as Moscow itself (1521). The devastations of the Tatars weakened Russia for a time and the negotiations with Lithuania were renewed; although a lasting peace was not concluded, a truce was continued for five years without the exchange of prisoners, and by this truce Smolensk remained to Russia. In 1526, through the medium of the emperor’s envoys, negotiations for a definitive peace were again opened, but Smolensk was an obstacle, neither side consenting to give up the town which was regarded as the key to Kiev. Smolensk was treated in the same manner as the other territories annexed; the inhabitants were transferred to Moscow as had been done with the inhabitants of Pskov and Novgorod, and it was for this reason that Smolensk stood by Moscow in 1612.

WARS WITH THE TATARS

Besides the relations with Lithuania, the relations with the Tatars constituted the chief problem of the reign of Vasili Ivanovitch. At his accession his first enterprise was to send against Kazan an army, amongst the leaders of which was his brother Dmitri; the siege of Kazan (1506) was unsuccessful, nevertheless in 1507 Muhammed Amin sent a letter to the grand prince with proposals of peace. Intercourse with the Crimea originally bore the same character as in the time of Ivan; a difference was however soon observable; the Crimea had no longer anything to fear from the remnants of the Golden Horde, and the Crimeans were therefore ready to make friends with whatever state would give them most. “Intercourse between the Crimea and the states of Moscow and Lithuania”—justly remarks Soloviov—“assumed the character of a bribery of robbers.”

Such being the condition of affairs, it is not surprising that in spite of the confirmation of the treaty concluded between Ivan and Mengli Girai, the Tatars should have begun their attacks. In 1507 they were defeated at the Oka, and in consequence of this, envoys were sent demanding presents, the liberation of Abdul Letiv, former czar of Kazan and stepson of Mengli Girai, and asking for assistance against Astrakhan. Vasili Ivanovitch liberated Abdul Letiv, gave him the town of Iuriev, and by an oath of alliance obliged him to promise faithfully to serve the czar, not to have relations with his enemies, not to permit his servants to plunder on the roads or insult the churches, to live at peace with the other princes, not to wage war against Kazan without permission, and not to leave the confines of the state of Moscow. In 1515 Mengli Girai died, and his son Muhammed Girai, who succeeded him, demanded from Vasili Ivanovitch not only the cession to the Polish king of Smolensk, at the acquisition of which without his knowledge he was much incensed, but also of those towns which had been taken by Ivan. After long delays and much trouble, many insults and, of course, presents, an oath of alliance was obtained of Muhammed Girai in 1519, but meanwhile the attacks of the Crimeans continued. The son of Muhammed Girai, the czarevitch Bogatir, laid waste the borderland of Riazan; and in 1517 the Tatars—notwithstanding the Russian offer of Koshira, bordering on the steppes, to Ahmed Girai, brother of the khan—penetrated as far as Tula, where they were repulsed.

The grand prince then proposed to the council (douma) the question whether relations with the Crimea should be maintained, and it was decided that they must be maintained in order to prevent the rupture from becoming an open one. Meanwhile in 1518 Muhammed Amin of Kazan died, and Abdul Letiv, who had previously been czar, died a month after him; at the request of the inhabitants of Kazan a czar was named from Moscow in 1519—Shig Alei, a prince of Astrakhan, and descendant of the czars of the Golden Horde. The Crimean khan was greatly dissatisfied at this choice of one whose family was at an eternal enmity with his own. Shig Alei remained in Kazan until 1521 when the inhabitants, dissatisfied with him, formed a conspiracy and invited Sahib Girai, brother of Muhammed Girai, to come and rule over them. Having established his brother on the throne of Kazan, Muhammed Girai advanced towards Moscow. The grand prince, warned too late by his well-wishers at Azov, could not take the necessary measures, and left Moscow, confiding the defence of the city to the boyars and baptised Tatar prince, Peter; they entered into negotiations with the enemy and paid him a ransom. The heroic defence of Pereiaslavl in Riazan by Khabar Simski somewhat softened the mournful impression of this calamity, which was augmented by the fact that Sahib Girai had at the same time devastated the territories of Nijni-Novgorod and Vladimir. The khan was preparing to repeat his expedition, and the grand prince himself took the field in expectation of his coming, but he never came.

Another undertaking then occupied Muhammed Girai: in 1523 he joined the Nogaians and conquered Astrakhan. There the Nogaians quarreled with him and killed him; his place was taken by Saidat Girai, who sent the grand prince the following conditions for an alliance: To give him 60,000 altines (an ancient coin of the value of three kopecks) and to make peace with Sahib Girai; but Vasili seeing the devastation of the Crimea both by the Nogaians and the Cossacks of Dashkevitch, who had hitherto acted in concert with the Crimeans, rejected these proposals. To avenge himself on Sahib Girai, who had massacred the Russians in Kazan where blood flowed like water, Vasili himself came to the land of Kazan (1523), devastated it, and made the inhabitants prisoners; on his return he built the town of Vasilsursk. When in 1524 a great army was sent from Moscow to Kazan, Sahib Girai fled to the Crimea, and the inhabitants of Kazan proclaimed his young nephew Sava Girai as czar; the expedition from Moscow was however unsuccessful, although the people of Kazan, who had lost their artillery engineer, sued for peace.

THE GROWING POWER OF RUSSIA

Their dependence upon the grand prince was irksome to the inhabitants of Kazan; fresh disputes arose, Vasili brought on an intrigue, and Kazan soon asked for a new czar. Vasili named Shig Alei, who was at that time in Nijni, but when the people of Kazan entreated that his brother Jan Alei (Enalei), who then ruled over Kassimov, should be nominated in his stead, Vasili consented. Jan Alei was established at Kazan and Shig Alei was given Koshira, but as he did not keep the peace, and entered on negotiations with Kazan, he was exiled to Belozero. Disturbances took place in the Crimea; Saidat Girai was overthrown by Sahib, but the relations between the Crimea and Moscow remained the same; the Tatars continued to make insignificant raids and obtained presents. Nevertheless the Tatar messengers began to be less respectfully treated at Moscow: “Our messengers”—wrote Sahib Girai—“complain that thou dost not honour them as of old, and yet it is thy duty to honour them; whoever wishes to pay respect to the master, throws a bone to his dog.” Of other diplomatic relations those with Sweden and Denmark bore the character of frontier disputes; the intercourse with the pope was entered upon through the desire of the latter to convert Russia to Catholicism and incite her to war against Turkey. The intercourse with the latter power had no particular results. It is curious to observe that at this period relations were entered into with India; the sultan Babur sent ambassadors (1533) with proposals of mutual commercial dealings.[b]

[1533 A.D.]

Each day added to the importance of Russia in Europe. Vasili exchanged ambassadors with the eastern courts and wrote to Francis I the great king of the Gauls. He numbered among his correspondents Leo X, Clement VII, Maximilian, and Charles V; Gustavus Vasa, founder of a new dynasty; Sultan Selim, conqueror of Egypt and Soliman the Magnificent. The grand mogul of the Indes, Babur, descendant of Timur, sought his friendship. The autocracy affirmed itself each day more vigorously. Vasili governed without consulting his council of boyars. “Moltchi, smerd!” (Hold, clown!) said he to one of the nobles who dared to raise an objection. This growing power manifested itself in the splendour of the court, the receptions of the ambassadors displaying a luxury hitherto unprecedented. Strangers, though not in large numbers, continued to come to Moscow, of whom the most illustrious was a monk from Mount Athos, Maxine the Greek.[e]

MAXINE THE GREEK

In the early days of his reign, when Vasili was examining the treasures left to him by his father, he perceived a large number of Greek church books which had been partly collected by former grand princes and partly brought to Moscow by Sophia, and which now lay covered with dust in utter neglect. The young sovereign manifested the desire of having a person who would be capable of looking them over and of translating the best of them into the Slavonic language. Such a person was not to be found in Moscow, and letters were written to Constantinople. The patriarch, being desirous of pleasing the grand prince, made search for such a philosopher in Bulgaria, in Macedonia and in Thessalonica; but the Ottoman yoke had there crushed all the remains of ancient learning and darkness and ignorance reigned in the sultan’s realms. Finally it was discovered that in the famous convent of the Annunciation on Mount Athos there were two monks, Sabba and Maxine, who were learned theologians and well versed in the Slavonic and Greek languages. The former on account of his great age was unable to undertake so long a journey, but the latter consented to the desire of the patriarch and of the grand prince.

It would indeed have been impossible to find a person better fitted for the projected work. Born in Greece, but educated in the enlightened west, Maxine had studied in Paris and Florence, had travelled much, was acquainted with various languages, and was possessed of unusual erudition, which he had acquired in the best universities and in conversation with men of enlightenment. Vasili received him with marked favour. When he saw the library, Maxine, in a transport of enthusiasm and astonishment, exclaimed: “Sire! all Greece does not now possess such treasures, neither does Italy, where Latin fanaticism has reduced to ashes many of the works of our theologians which my compatriots had saved from the Mohammedan barbarians.” The grand prince listened to him with the liveliest pleasure and confided the library to his care. The zealous Greek made a catalogue of the books which had been until then unknown to the Slavonic people. By desire of the sovereign, and with the assistance of three Muscovites, Vasili, Dmitri and Michael Medovartzov, he translated the commentary of the psalter. Approved by the Metropolitan Varlaam and all the ecclesiastical council, this important work made Maxine famous, and so endeared him to the grand prince that he could not part with him, and daily conversed with him on matters of religion. The wise Greek was not, however, dazzled by these honours, and though grateful to Vasili, he earnestly implored him to allow him to return to the quiet of his retreat at Mount Athos: “There,” said he, “will I praise your name and tell my compatriots that in the world there still exists a Christian czar, mighty and great, who, if it pleases the Most High, may yet deliver us from the tyranny of the infidel.” But Vasili only replied by fresh signs of favour and kept him nine years in Moscow; this time was spent by Maxine in the translation of various works, in correcting errors in the ancient translations, and in composing works of piety of which more than a hundred are known to us.

Having free access to the grand prince, he sometimes interceded for the noblemen who had fallen in disgrace and regained for them the sovereign’s favour. This excited the dissatisfaction and envy of many persons, in particular of the clergy and of the worldly-minded monks of St. Joseph, who enjoyed the favour of Vasili. The humble-minded metropolitan Varlaam had cared little for earthly matters, but his successor, the proud Daniel, soon declared himself the enemy of the foreigner. It began to be asked: “Who is this man who dares to deface our sacred church books and restore to favour the disgraced boyars?” Some tried to prove that he was a heretic, others represented him to the grand prince as an ungrateful calumniator who censured the acts of the sovereign behind his back. It was at this time that Vasili was divorced from the unfortunate Solomonia, and it is said that this pious ecclesiastic did really disapprove of it; however we find amongst his works a discourse against those who repudiate their wives without lawful cause. Always disposed to take the part of the oppressed, he secretly received them in his cell and sometimes heard injurious speeches directed against the sovereign and the metropolitan. Thus the unfortunate boyar Ivan Beklemishef complained to him of the irascibility of Vasili, and said that formerly the venerable pastors of the church had restrained the sovereigns from indulging their passions and committing injustice, whereas now Moscow no longer had a metropolitan, for Daniel only bore the name and the mask of a pastor, without thinking that he ought to be the guide of consciences and the protector of the innocent; he also said that Maxine would never be allowed to leave Russia, because the grand prince and the metropolitan feared his indiscretions in other countries, where he might publish the tale of their faults and weaknesses. At last Maxine’s enemies so irritated the grand prince against him, that he ordered him to be brought to judgment and Maxine was condemned to be confined in one of the monasteries of Iver, having been found guilty of falsely interpreting the Holy Scriptures and the dogmas of the church. According to the opinion of some contemporaries the charge was a calumny invented by Jonas, archimandrite of the Tchudov monastery, Vassian, bishop of Kolomna, and the metropolitan.[f]

PRIVATE LIFE OF VASILI IVANOVITCH; HIS DEATH

There is one event in the private life of Vasili Ivanovitch which has great importance on the subsequent course of history, and throws a clearer light on the relations of men and parties at this epoch. This event is his divorce and second marriage. Vasili Ivanovitch had first contracted a marriage in the year of his father’s death with Solomonia Sabourov; but they had no children and Solomonia vainly resorted to sorcery in order to have children and keep the love of her husband. The grand prince no longer loved her and decided to divorce her. He consulted his boyars, laying stress on the fact that he had no heir and that his brothers did not understand how to govern their own appanages; it is said that the boyars replied “The unfruitful fig-tree is cut down and cast out of the vineyard.” The sovereign then turned with the same question to the spiritual powers: the metropolitan Daniel gave his entire consent, but the monk Vassian, known in the world as Prince Vasili Patrikëiev, who, together with his father, had been forced to become a monk during the reign of Ivan because he belonged to the party of Helen, but who was now greatly esteemed by Vasili, was against the divorce and was therefore banished from the monastery of Simon to that of Joseph. Maxine the Greek and Prince Simon Kurbski were also against the divorce, and suffered for their opinion; and the boyar Beklemishev, who was on friendly terms with Maxine, was executed. Solomonia was made to take the veil at the convent of Suzdal and Vasili married Helen Vasilievna Glinski, the niece of Michael Glinski who had been liberated from prison (1526). From this marriage Vasili had two sons; Ivan (born 1530) and Iuri (born 1533). Vasili’s love for his second wife was so great that according to Herberstein he had his beard cut off to please her. Towards the end of 1533 Vasili fell ill and died on December 3rd, leaving as his heir his infant son Ivan.[b]

A FORECAST OF THE REIGN OF IVAN (IV) THE TERRIBLE

The rôle and the character of Ivan IV have been and still are very differently appreciated by Russian historians. Karamzin, who has never submitted his accounts and his documents to a sufficiently severe critic, sees in him a prince who, naturally vicious and cruel, gave, under restriction to two virtuous ministers, a few years of tranquillity to Russia; and who subsequently, abandoning himself to the fury of his passions, appalled Europe as well as the empire with what the historian designates “seven epochs of massacres.” Kostomarov re-echoes the opinions of Karamzin.

Another school, represented by Soloviev and Zabielin, has manifested a greater defiance towards the prejudiced statements of Kurbski, chief of the oligarchical party; towards Guagnini, a courtier of the king of Poland; towards Tanbe and Kruse, traitors to the sovereign who had taken them into his service. Above all, they have taken into account the times and the society in whose midst Ivan the Terrible lived. They concern themselves less with his morals as an individual than with his rôle as instrument of the historical development of Russia. Did not the French historians during long years misinterpret the enormous services rendered by Louis XI in the great work of the unification of France and of the creation of the modern state? His justification was at length achieved after a more minute examination into documents and circumstances.

At the time when Ivan succeeded his father the struggle of the central power against the forces of the past had changed character. The old Russian states, which had held so long in check the new power of Moscow; the principalities of Tver, Riazan, Suzdal, Novgorod-Seversk; the republics of Novgorod, Pskov, Viatka had lost their independence. Their possessions had served to aggrandise those of Moscow. All northern and eastern Russia was thus united under the sceptre of the grand prince. To the ceaseless struggles constantly breaking out against Tver, Riazan, Novgorod, was to succeed the great foreign strife—the holy war against Lithuania, the Tatars, the Swedes.

Precisely because the work of the unification of Great Russia was accomplished, the resistance in the interior against the prince’s authority was to become more active. The descendants of reigning families dispossessed by force of bribery or arms, the servitors of those old royal houses, had entered the service of the masters of Moscow. His court was composed of crownless princes—the Chouiski, the Kurbski, the Vorotinski; descendants of ancient appanaged princes, proud of the blood of Rurik which coursed through their veins. Others were descended from the Lithuanian Gedimine, or from the baptised Tatar Monzas.

All these princes, as well as the powerful boyars of Tver, Riazan, Novgorod, were become the boyars of the grand prince. There was for all only one court at which they could serve—that of Moscow. When Russia had been divided into sovereign states, the discontented boyars had been at liberty to change masters—to pass from the service of Tchernigov into that of Kiev, from that of Suzdal into that of Novgorod. Now, whither could they go? Outside of Moscow, there were only foreign rulers, enemies of Russia. To make use of the ancient right to change masters was to go over to the enemy—it was treason. “To change” and “to betray” were become synonymous: the Russian word izmiyanit (third person singular of “to change”) was become the word izmiyanik (“traitor”).

The Russian boyar could take refuge neither with the Germans, the Swedes, nor the Tatars; he could go only to the sovereign of Lithuania—but this was the worst possible species of change, the most pernicious form of treason. The prince of Moscow knew well that the war with Lithuania—that state which Polish in the west, by its Russian provinces, in the east exercised a dangerous attraction over subjects of Moscow—was a struggle for existence. Lithuania was not only a foreign enemy—it was a domestic enemy, with intercourse and sympathies in the very heart of the Russian state, even in the palace of the czar; her formidable hand was felt in all intrigues, in all conspiracies. The foreign war against Lithuania, the domestic war against the Russian oligarchy are but two different phases of the same war—the heaviest and most perilous of all those undertaken by the grand prince of Moscow. The dispossessed princes, the boyars of the old independent states had given up the struggle against him on the field of battle; they continued to struggle against him in his own court.

It was no longer war between state and state; it was intestine strife—that of the oligarchy against autocratic power. Resigned to the loss of their sovereignty, the new prince-boyars of Moscow were not yet resigned to their position as mere subjects. The struggle was thus limited to a narrower field, and was therefore the more desperate. The court at Moscow was a tilt-yard, whence none could emerge without a change of masters—the Lithuanian for the Muscovite—without treason: hence the furious nature of the war of two principles under Ivan IV.[e]

THE MINORITY OF IVAN IV

On the death of his father, Ivan was only three years of age. Helena, his mother, a woman unfit for the toils of government, impure in her conduct, and without judgment, assumed the office of regent, which she shared with a paramour, whose elevation to such a height caused universal disgust, particularly among the princes of the blood and the nobility. The measures which had of late years been adopted towards the boyars were not forgotten by that haughty class; and now that the infirm state of the throne gave them a fair pretext for complaint, they conspired against the regent, partly with a view to remove so unpopular and degraded a person from the imperial seat, but principally that they might take advantage of the minority of the czar, and seize upon the empire for their own ends. The circumstances in which the death of Vasili left the country were favourable to these designs. The licentiousness that prevailed at court, the absence of a strict and responsible head, and the confusion that generally took the place of the order that had previously prevailed, assisted the treacherous nobles in their treasonable projects. They had long panted for revenge and restitution, and the time seemed to be ripe for the execution of their plans.

Ivan the Terrible

(1530-1584)

Amongst the most prominent members of this patrician league, were the three paternal uncles of the young prince. They made no scruple of exhibiting their feelings; and they at last grew so clamorous, that the regent, on the ground that they entertained designs upon the throne, condemned them to loathsome dungeons, where they died in lingering torments. Their followers and abettors suffered by torture and the worst kinds of ignominious punishment. These examples spread such consternation amongst the rest of the conspirators, that they fled to Lithuania and the Crimea, where they endeavoured to inspire a sympathy in their misfortunes. But the regent, whose time appears to have been solely dedicated to the worst description of pleasures, being unable to preserve herself without despotism, succeeded in overcoming the enemies whom her own conduct was so mainly instrumental in creating.

The reign of lascivious folly and wanton rigour was not, however, destined to survive the wrath of the nobles. For five years, intestine jealousies and thickening plots plunged the country into anarchy; and, at last, the regent died suddenly, having, it is believed, fallen by poison administered through the agency of the revengeful boyars. The spectacle of one criminal executing summary justice upon another, is not destitute of some moral utility; and in this case it might have had its beneficial influence, were it not that the principal conspirators had no sooner taken off the regent than they violently seized upon the guardianship of the throne.

The foremost persons in this drama were the Shuiski—a family that had long been treated with suspicion by the czars, their insolent bearing having always exposed them to distrust. Prince Shuiski was appointed president of the council of the boyars, to whom the administration of affairs was confided, and although his malignant purposes were kept in check by the crowd of equally ambitious persons that surrounded him, he possessed sufficient opportunities to consummate a variety of wrongs upon the resources of the state and upon obnoxious individuals—thus revenging himself indiscriminately for the ancient injuries his race had suffered. During this iniquitous rule, which exhibited the extraordinary features of a government composed of persons with different interests, pressing forward to the same end, and making a common prey of the trust that was reposed in their hands, Russia was despoiled in every quarter. The Tatars, freed for a season from the watchful vigilance of the throne, roamed at large through the provinces, pillaging and slaying wherever they went; and this enormous guilt was crowned by the rapacious exactions and sanguinary proscriptions of the council. The young Ivan was subjected to the most brutal insults: his education was designedly neglected; he was kept in total ignorance of public affairs, that he might be rendered unqualified to assume the hereditary power; and Prince Shuiski, in the midst of these base intrigues against the future czar, was often seen to treat him in a contemptuous and degrading manner, on one occasion he stretched forth his legs, and pressed the weight of his feet on the body of the boy. Perhaps these unexampled provocations, and the privations to which he was condemned, produced the germs of a character which was afterwards developed in such terrible magnificence, the fiend that lived in the heart of Ivan might not have been born with him; it was probably generated by the cruelties and wrongs that were practised on his youth.

In vain the Belski, moderate and wise, and the primate, influenced by the purest motives, remonstrated against the ruinous proceedings of the council. The voice of admonition was lost in the hideous orgies of the boyars, until a sudden invasion by the Tatars awakened them to a sense of their peril. They rallied, order was restored, and Russia was preserved. But the danger was no sooner over than the Shuiski returned in all their former strength, seized upon Moscow in the dead of the night, penetrated to the couch of Ivan, and, dragging him out of his sleep, endeavoured to destroy his intellect by filling him with sudden terror. The primate, whose mild representations had displeased them, was ill-treated and deposed: and the prince Belski, who could not be prevailed upon to link his fortunes with their desperate courses, was murdered in the height of their frenzy. Even those members of their own body who, touched by some intermittent pity, ventured to expostulate, were beaten in the chamber of their deliberations, and cast out from amongst them.

Under such unpropitious auspices as these, the young Ivan, the inheritor of a consolidated empire, grew up to manhood. His disposition, naturally fierce, headstrong, and vindictive, was most insidiously cultivated into ferocity by the artful counsellors that surrounded him. His earliest amusements were the torture of wild animals, the ignoble feat of riding over old men and women, flinging stones from ambuscades upon the passers-by, and precipitating dogs and cats from the summit of his palace. Such entertainments as these, the sport of boyhood, gave unfortunately too correct a prognostic of the fatal career that lay before him. By a curious retribution, the first exercise of this terrible temper in its application to humanity fell upon the Shuiski, who certainly, of all mankind, best merited its infliction. When Ivan was in his thirteenth year, he accompanied a hunting party at which Prince Gluiski—another factious lord—and the president of the council were present. Gluiski, himself a violent and remorseless man, envied the ascendency of Shuiski, and prompted the young prince to address him in words of great heat and insult. Shuiski, astonished at the youth’s boldness, replied in anger. This was sufficient provocation. Ivan gave way to his rage, and, on a concerted signal, Shuiski was dragged out into the public streets, and worried alive by dogs in the open daylight. The wretch expiated a life of guilt by the most horrible agonies.

Thus freed from one tyranny, Ivan was destined for another, which, however, accepted him as its nominal head, urging him onward to acts of blood which were but too congenial to his taste. The Gluiski having got rid of their formidable competitor in the race of crime, now assumed the direction of affairs. Under their administration, the prince was led to the commission of the most extravagant atrocities; and the doctrine was inculcated upon his mind, that the only way to assert authority was by manifesting the extremity of its wrath. He was taught to believe that power consisted in oppression. They applauded each fresh instance of vengeance; and initiated him into a short method of relieving himself from every person who troubled or offended him, by sacrificing the victim on the spot.

IVAN ASSUMES THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT

This terrible system continued for three years. The pupilage of the prince was an uninterrupted scene of horror; and he was crowned czar of all the Russias in his eighteenth year, after a minority of blood. The citizens, unsafe and trembling under a despotism which was so capricious in its enormities, were at length driven to desperation. They fired the city in several places one night, and Ivan awoke the next morning amidst flame and smoke, the tossing of brands, and the imprecations of the multitude. He had been accustomed to terrors, but this conflagration smote him to the heart. In the midst of the confusion, Sylvester, a monk belonging to that roving order of persons who then wandered through the country affecting to be inspired with a divine mission, suddenly appeared in the presence of the affrighted despot. With a Gospel in one hand, while the other was raised in an attitude of prophecy, he pointed to the ruins that surrounded him, and invoking the attention of the prince to the consequences of his infatuation, he dwelt upon certain appearances from heaven which prognosticated evil to the dynasty if these courses were not abandoned; and, working powerfully upon a mind already agonised with fear, he finally succeeded in gaining a complete ascendency over the czar. The effect was sudden and extraordinary. The virtuous Alexis Adaschev aided Sylvester in his efforts to reclaim Ivan; and these, assisted by the gentle persuasions of the beautiful Anastasia, Ivan’s young consort whom he had but recently married, appeared to produce a strong impression upon his feelings.

The result was an entire change in the system of government. Able and upright men displaced the corrupt and audacious counsellors who had hitherto filled the empire with alarm; a new organisation of the army took place; a just assessment of the fiefs, the various services, and contingents, was established; proprietors of estates were obliged to contribute to the maintenance of the military strength according to their means; and by a bonus in the pay of the soldiery, which was now adopted, the available force of the country was raised to the number of three hundred thousand men. Thus strengthened, with prudent ministers and a powerful army, Ivan set himself to the worthy task of subduing the rebellious Tatars. His ardour even appears to have carried him into extremes, for in the depth of winter he marched at the head of the soldiery to the siege of Kazan, although his followers did not hesitate to declare that no good commander would think of conducting his troops in so rigorous a season into the quarters of the enemy. But such ebullitions of discontent were punished with so much severity, that the troops soon learned to be content with the severities which procured such victories as Ivan was fortunate enough to gain. The first measure of great utility which he accomplished, was the erection of forts on the frontier to repel the aggressions of the enemy; but apprehending that even these were not sufficient to deter the marauders, he advanced upon Kazan, and captured it by springing a mine—a process in the art of war which was quite novel to the Russians, and filled them with astonishment and admiration. Having taken the city, he turned the mosques of the Tatars into Christian temples, and caused the khan to be baptised; which proofs of his religious zeal were admirably calculated to ingratiate him in the regards of the people.

In one of those ecstatic moods which sometimes assail the better judgment of the old chroniclers, the Russian historian informs us that Ivan, upon entering Kazan, wept at the sight of the dead bodies with which the streets were strewn. We certainly cannot put in any evidence in disproof of this apocryphal assertion, but the picture of Nero fiddling while Rome was burning is even more probable.

In addition to his successes at Kazan, Ivan was triumphant in the kingdom of Astrakhan, which he afterwards annexed to the Russian empire. This acquisition was very valuable, as in that district the vine, and other rich productions of the soil, grew in remarkable luxuriance. Fortune seemed on all hands to favour the interval of grace that visited the czar. While he was pursuing his course of victory in other places, eighty thousand Turks, who had been despatched by Selim II against Astrakhan, perished in the desolate steppes by which it was surrounded. The wars were thus terminated in glorious and important achievements, which laid the foundations of that expanded commerce which afterwards rendered illustrious the era of one of the greatest monarchs the world ever produced.

THE DISCOVERY OF SIBERIA

But the most important event which distinguished this period of the reign of Ivan was the discovery of Siberia, an empire of extraordinary magnitude, producing the richest furs, and studded with inexhaustible mines of salt, copper and silver. The discovery was accidental, and caused at first so slight a degree of attention, that it was suffered to be forgotten until another accident, some years afterwards, recalled it to the consideration of the government. A body of men, who had been sent across the mountains of Ingermanland by the czar, penetrated as far as the banks of the Oley; but the discoveries they reported were either so imperfect, or so ill-described, that they were passed over in silence. It subsequently occurred, however, that a merchant of the name of Strogonov, who was the proprietor of some salt mines on the confines of Siberia, had his curiosity stimulated by several persons who traded with him, and whose strange costume and foreign manners excited in him a desire to become acquainted with the interior of the country from whence they came. Accordingly he commissioned a few of his people to return with them into Siberia, and to collect such information respecting it as their opportunities might enable them to acquire. These people, having explored the unknown districts, which they found to be inhabited by a race of Tatars, who possessed a capital called Sibir, returned to their employer charged with a history of wonders, and a quantity of costly furs, which promised to open a new source of gain to the diligent merchant. Strogonov, however, resolved not to keep the knowledge he had thus attained exclusively to himself, and immediately communicated all he knew to the court. In the mean time, Iermak, a Don Cossack adventurer, who, at the head of a gang of those lawless robbers, infested the roads, plundering the inhabitants and travellers in that part of Russia, happened to come, accidentally, to the merchant’s dwelling, on his flight from some Russian troops that had been sent in search of him. While he remained there, he learned by chance, from Strogonov, of the newly discovered land; and he and his band, being persons who had nothing to lose, and who subsisted solely by desperate predatory practices, resolved to enter the strange country, and seek in its unknown retreats a source of safety and support. The resistance this adventurer experienced from the Siberians greatly thinned the ranks of his daring troops, but the forlorn character of the expedition inspired them with reckless valour; and, after many exhausting conflicts, they finally overran the country, and made themselves master of the capital. Iermak now bethought him of what he should do with his perilous conquest; and seeing that he possessed no means of accumulating sovereign power, or even of possessing by tribute, or otherwise, so vast a territory, he threw himself at the feet of the czar, tendered to him the territory he had won, and solicited in return a full pardon for all the delinquencies he and his followers had committed. Ivan readily granted the pardon, and took possession of his new acquisition. The work of annexation went rapidly forward. Several commodious towns were built, strong forts were constructed, the mines were garrisoned, and that great expanse of desert and mountains, which was afterwards destined to become the convict settlement of Russia, was formally and permanently consolidated in the dominions of the autocrat.

THE RESTRAINING INFLUENCE OF ANASTASIA

The civil and social improvement of the empire kept pace with the armed progress. A number of celebrated artists were engaged from the dominions, and by the permission, of Charles V; the art of letterpress printing was introduced, and the first type that ever was seen in Russia was imported by Ivan; the northern parts were opened to a new mercantile intercourse; and Archangel was established. The laws were revised; and the fees of the governors of the provinces who administered justice, paying themselves by pecuniary mulcts on the suitors, were abolished, and in their place gratuitous justice was administered, and a general assessment levied, which was collected by officers appointed by government. The grasping demands of the clergy were restrained, their revenues placed upon a more equitable basis, and their morals improved by mild but decisive restrictions.

Such were the fruits of the influence of Anastasia, which procured a hearing for the wisdom of Alexis and Sylvester. While that amiable and enlightened lady lived, Ivan pursued a course of just and wise measures that reflected honour upon his name, and conferred extensive benefits upon his country. But the latent nature was not extinguished: it only slept, hushed into slumber by the sweet influences before which his savage dispositions were subdued. An old bishop, who had formerly been banished from the court on account of his crimes, and who was one day consulted by Ivan, replied to the czar in some memorable words which were ever afterwards cherished in his memory, and were not without their power over his subsequent life. “If you wish,” exclaimed the bishop, “to be truly a sovereign, never seek a counsellor wiser than yourself; never receive advice from any man. Command, but never obey; and you will be a terror to the boyars. Remember that he who is permitted to begin advising, is certain to end by ruling, his sovereign.” Ivan, kissing the old man’s hand, is said to have answered, “My own father could not have spoken more wisely!” This remarkable advice—similar to that which is attributed to a celebrated cardinal of modern times, on his death-bed—seems to have governed the conduct of Ivan from the moment that the death of the princess Anastasia released him from the embarrassment of her counsels. She died in 1560.

IVAN’S ATROCITIES

[1560 A.D.]

The incarnate fiend, relieved from the oppressive presence of virtue, resumed at once his original nature. If the narrative of his crimes could be spared from the page of history, it would rescue us from a series of details, the very relation of which must sicken the least susceptible mind. But there was a passion so unearthly in this paragon of monsters—he was so elevated in atrocity, and reached so sublime a height in the perpetration of cruelties—that his life, incredible and disgusting as it is, fills too great a space in the annals of despotism to be passed over lightly. One of his historians charitably supposes him to have been a lunatic.

The first act of Ivan was to banish his prudent advisers, the men who had hitherto preserved him from the worst calamities. Those persons were replaced by others, who studiously laboured to destroy their predecessors by false stories of their treachery to the czarina, whose death was unequivocally laid to their charge. That weakness, or superstition, which is an inherent quality in all savage natures, led Ivan to believe, or to fancy, that he believed those absurd accusations; and he acted with promptitude upon the miserable excuse which they afforded him. He hunted the partisans of the late ministers wherever they could be detected; some he put to the most disgraceful deaths, others he imprisoned or banished, varying the monotony of their solitary lives by the infliction of exquisite tortures. One prince, who refused to join in the lascivious pleasures of the court, was poinarded at prayers in the church; and another was stabbed to the heart by the czar’s own hand, because he had the presumption to remonstrate with one of the new favourites. The prince Andrew Kurbski, a noble who, both in the cabinet and the field, had rendered the most important services to the government and the country, received intimation that a similar fate awaited him; and, indignant at the prospect of such an unworthy return for his devotion to the throne of the czars, he retired into Lithuania, and united himself with Sigismund, the king of Poland, and, at that time, one of the most formidable enemies of Russia. This revolt maddened Ivan beyond control; and his exasperation was increased by the receipt of a letter from the prince, in which he boldly charged the czar with all the miseries that were entailed upon their common country, with having shed the blood of Israel’s elders in the temples of the Lord; and wound up by threatening him with the vengeance of that tribunal before which he must one day answer to the accusations of the spirits of the murdered. The messenger who was daring enough to present this epistle to the czar suffered for his temerity. Ivan, on learning from whence he came, struck him across the legs with an iron rod which he usually carried in his hand; and while the blood flowed copiously from the wounds, leaned unconcernedly upon his rod to read the rebellious letter. The correspondence that ensued upon this occasion, like all the correspondence of Ivan’s which has come down to us, is remarkable for the most blasphemous presumption and arrogant hyperbole. He wrote all his letters with his own hand, and was proud of his literary attainments, which, had they been directed into worthier channels, might have rendered him a distinguished ornament of his age.

THE POLISH INVASION

The consequence of the disaffection of Kurbski was the enrolment of a Polish army with a view to a descent upon Russia, and an invasion of the southern provinces by the Tatars at the instigation of Sigismund. This demonstration increased the rage of the czar: he treated everybody around him as if they were the creatures of Kurbski: he distrusted everybody; and put numbers to the rack and to death on the bare suspicion of their guilt, and was overheard to lament that he could not find victims enough to satisfy his wrath. He charged the boyars indiscriminately with harbouring secret designs against the welfare and happiness of the state; he dispossessed many of them of their private fortunes; and in a letter which is still extant, he urged against them as crimes, all the benefits which the sane portion of his rule had conferred upon Russia. In this delirium of the fever of despotism, the clergy remonstrated with some firmness; and, in order to obtain a fresh excuse for making new victims, he adopted an expedient as unexpected as it was singular. He caused a report to be spread on a sudden, that he was about to leave Moscow; but the point of his destination, or the reason of his withdrawal were preserved as profound secrets. The mystery of this announcement created a panic at Moscow. The people knew not what was to come next, whether the tyrant was about to put some scheme of universal destruction into execution, or whether it was merely a prelude to some extravagant exhibition of superstitious credulity, which always assumed in their eyes the aspect of religious devotion. Agreeably to this vague announcement of the czar’s design, one morning in December, at an early hour, the great square of the Kremlin was filled with travelling sledges, some of which contained gold and silver, others clothes, and not a few crosses, images, and the relics of saints. These preparations attracted crowds of astonished gazers, who looked on in stupid wonder at the extraordinary sight. In a few minutes the czar, followed by his family, was seen to descend from the palace, with the officers of his household, and a numerous retinue. From the palace he passed on to the church of the Assumption; and, having ordered the metropolitan to celebrate mass, he prayed with great devotion, and received the blessing of Athanasius. Returning from the church, he held out his hand to the assembled multitudes, that they might satisfy themselves with a farewell kiss; and then, having in silence, and with unusual solemnity, walked through the groups that beset his path, he mounted his sledge, and drove off accompanied by a regiment of horse. The inhabitants of Moscow, astonished and terror-struck by the scene, were lost in conjecture. The city was without a government. Ivan had so dexterously contrived to impress them with an idea that he derived his sovereignty from God, that he found no great difficulty ultimately in confounding to the imagination of an enslaved and uninstructed people the distinction between God and the sovereign; and in every crisis of disaster that occurred, the people fell back upon their fanaticism, and looked to the czar for that succour which could alone come from heaven. Deserted at this moment by Ivan, they began to believe that they were deserted by Omnipotence.

A month elapsed, and no tidings were received of the destination or proceedings of the czar. At length, at the end of that period, two letters were received from him; the one addressed to the metropolitan, the other to the people. The former epistle contained a recapitulation of the disorders that had prevailed during his minority, all of which he attributed to the clergy and the boyars; and he asserted that similar crimes against the majesty of the state were about to break out anew. He also complained that his attempts to secure the public tranquillity were constantly thwarted by the evil interference of Athanasius and the clergy; that, therefore, he had abandoned the helm of affairs, and had left Moscow to wander about the earth. In his letter to the people, he assured them of his good will, repeated that he had no cause of complaint against them, and concluded by bidding them farewell for ever. It appeared by his epistles that he had intrenched himself in Alexandrovski, a distant fortress that lay in the depths of a gloomy forest.

These communications spread dismay amongst the Muscovites. Ivan’s severity towards the nobility and clergy had, even against the grain of reason, procured him no inconsiderable popularity with the bulk of the people; and on this occasion it broke forth in lamentations, which derived much of their force from the association of the ideas of the throne of the czar and the throne of heaven. Groups of disconsolate citizens assembled in the street to confer upon what was to be done; the shops were shut, the tribunals of justice and public offices were closed, and every kind of business was suspended. “The czar,” they exclaimed, “has forsaken us, and we are lost. Who will now defend us against the enemy? what are sheep without the shepherd?” In this state of despair a deputation of the principal inhabitants waited upon the metropolitan, and besought of him to solicit Ivan to return to his faithful subjects. Frantic with desperate zeal, they cried, “Let him punish all those who deserve it; has he not the power of life and death? The state cannot remain without a head, and we will not acknowledge any other than the one God has given us.” It was at last resolved that a numerous body of prelates and nobles should hasten to Alexandrovski, prostrate themselves in the dust before Ivan, and entreat of him to return to Moscow. This proceeding had the desired effect. They discovered Ivan in his retreat, struck the ground before him with their heads, and supplicated him for the sake of the souls of millions, which were now perishing in his absence as the head of the orthodox church, to resume his holy functions. This was what Ivan wanted: he affected to be much moved by their prayers, and with a show of reluctance consented to return, provided the clergy pledged themselves not to interfere whenever he found it necessary to punish those who engaged in conspiracies against the state, or against him or his family. This artful condition was immediately granted; and the magnanimity of a tyrant who thus entrapped the people into an admission of the necessity of his despotic proceedings, was extolled to the skies.

The restoration of the despot was received with acclamations; but the Muscovites were astonished by the great alteration which had taken place in his personal appearance during his absence. Only a month, say their historians, had elapsed, yet they hardly knew him again. His powerful and muscular body, his expanded chest, and robust limbs, had shrunk to a skeleton; his head, once covered with luxuriant locks, was now bald; his rich and flowing beard was reduced to a few ragged stumps; his eyes were dull; and his features, stamped with a ravenous ferocity, were now deformed by apparent thought and anguish. Yet these sad changes,—the fearful effects of the incessant tortures of a mind bewildered by its own fury—excited the sympathies of the infatuated citizens who beheld them.

After his entry into Moscow he addressed the people, again expatiating on the crimes of the boyars and the necessity for exercising the dominant sovereign sway in its extreme development. To this succeeded a pious exhortation on the vanities of the world—one of the arguments by which he endeavoured to reconcile his victims to their miserable fate—which he concluded by a proposal to institute a new body-guard, to be composed of one thousand men of noble birth, chosen from the general body of the army, and to be called the Opritshnina, or select legion. The people, blind to the danger of conceding so great a power to the sovereign, willingly acceded to this proposal, the execution of which was but a new instrument for destroying their liberties. The select legion, better known in subsequent years by the name of the Strelitz, was the foundation of a regular standing army in Russia; for until the formation of that corps the military force of the empire was raised upon occasions, each nobleman contributing according to his ability to meet the exigencies of the demand.[32]

THE REIGN OF TERROR

This was the first step to the new reign of terror; and while the select legion was in course of formation, Ivan employed himself in the erection of a new palace outside the walls of the Kremlin; for it appears that his ambition or his fears produced in him a dislike for the ancient residence of the royal family. In order to build this unnecessary palace, he drove out all the inhabitants of the adjacent streets, and posted his satellites around the neighbourhood to keep it free from intrusion. Twelve thousand of the richest inhabitants were dispossessed of their estates to make room for his designs, and upon the creatures of his disgraceful bounty he bestowed the spoils of his plunder. The new palace was to all intents an impregnable fortress; yet such were the secret horrors engendered by his course of villanies, that Ivan, thinking that it was not sufficiently secure, retired again to Alexandrovski, which expanded from an humble village into a considerable town. It contained a celebrated church of our Lady, which was painted on the outside with the most gaudy colors, every brick containing the representation of a cross. Here the czar possessed a large palace surrounded by a ditch and ramparts: his civil and military functionaries had separate houses; and the legionaries and trades-people had distinct streets. One of the rules imposed by the tyrant was that no person should enter or leave the town without his express permission, and a patrol constantly occupied the neighbourhood to observe that this order was fulfilled. A new notion now possessed him. Buried in the forlorn solitudes of the deep forests, he converted his palace into a monastery, assumed the style and title of abbot, turned his favourites into monks, and called his body of select and depraved legionaries by the name of the Brothers. He provided them all with black vestments, under which they wore splendid habits, embroidered with gold and fur; and he instituted a code of practice as austere as it was inconsistent. At three o’clock in the morning, the matin service began, which lasted until seven; at eight mass commenced again, and at ten the whole body, except Ivan, who stood reading aloud from some religious book, sat down to a sumptuous repast. The remnants of the table were afterwards distributed amongst the poor—for throughout the whole of Ivan’s actions there was always an evident desire to win the favour of the multitude; the czar dined after the rest, and then descended to the dungeons to witness the infliction of tortures upon some of his victims, which gave him extraordinary delight. At eight o’clock vespers were read; and at ten Ivan retired to his chamber, where he was lulled to sleep by three blind men. To diversify this monotonous life, he sometimes visited the monasteries, or hunted wild beasts in the woods; but he was constantly employed in issuing his instructions upon public business, and even during prayers often gave his most cruel and sanguinary orders. Such was the life of the tyrant in his gloomy seclusion at Alexandrovski.

During this period, the select legion increased in number to six thousand men, embracing in their body all the abandoned and infamous wretches who could be procured for hire. As types of their office, they were ordered to suspend from the saddle-bow a dog’s head and a broom—the former to signify that they worried the enemies of the czar, and the latter to indicate that they swept them off the face of the earth. They went from street to street armed with long daggers and hatchets in search of victims, who amounted daily to a score. They soon became the objects of fear and execration. The first victims were the prince Shuiski and his son. At the place of execution, the younger offered himself first to the axe; but the feelings of nature were so strong in the heart of the parent, that he could not endure to witness the death of his son, and he insisted on receiving his death first. When his head rolled off, his son embraced it in a passion of tears; and while the lips of the living yet clung to the quivering and agonised features of the dead, the executioner’s axe descended upon the son’s neck. On the same day four other princes were beheaded, and a fifth impaled. Several boyars were exiled, others forced to embrace the monastic vows, and a still greater number were beggared by confiscation. These horrors increased every day. The streets and squares were filled with dead bodies; and such was the universal terror, that the survivors did not dare to appear to give the rites of burial to the dead. It would appear that the murder of individuals ceased at length to satisfy the insatiate appetite of the monster: he longed for massacre on a more extended scale; his eyes grew tired of the slow process of execution in detail. Accordingly he sought for excuses to lay whole towns in blood. A few of the inhabitants of Tortchesk happening one day to quarrel with some of the legionaries, Ivan declared them all to be rebels, and instantly caused them en masse to be either tortured to death or drowned. The inhabitants of Kolomua were similarly disposed of, merely because they were the dependents of a nobleman who had outgrown his favour. He spared neither sex nor age. Many ladies were exposed in the streets, and then shot in the public sight.

THE MARCH AGAINST NOVGOROD

[1569 A.D.]

These atrocities, unparalleled in the annals of the world, form but the prelude to the enormous crimes of this infamous prince. His march of devastation to Novgorod may be considered as the grand act of his career of blood. The provocation which led to the sanguinary punishment of that city was a falsehood invented by a profligate fellow who wanted to escape justice, and to take refuge upon the authorities, who had found him guilty of the commission of some offences. This criminal, knowing that Ivan rewarded all those who came before him with charges of disaffection, wrote a letter in the name of the archbishop and inhabitants of Novgorod to the king of Poland, offering to put the city under that monarch’s protection. This letter he carefully concealed behind an image of the Virgin in the church of St. Sophia, and then laid before the czar at Moscow a private revelation of the conspiracy which he had himself invented. Ivan despatched a trusty messenger to Novgorod, who discovered the letter in the spot to which the informer had referred, and, upon this evidence, the city was denounced to the vengeance of the select legion. But as it was likely that the sight of this dreadful deed would be more exciting than any he had hitherto witnessed, Ivan put himself at the head of his guards, and in December 1569, accompanied by his son, departed from Alexandrovski on his mission of destruction.

On his way he passed through the town of Klin, and exterminated the whole of the population. When he arrived at the city of Tver, he took up his quarters at a monastery outside the gates, and sent his soldiers into the city to massacre and plunder the inhabitants at will. The horrors of the scene reminded the unfortunate people of the terrible cruelties inflicted upon their ancestors by the khan Usbak in 1327. At some of the feats of death, Ivan himself assisted: and his confidential minister Skuratov secretly entered the cell of a monastery where the virtuous and deposed metropolitan was confined, and strangled him.

Proceeding onwards from Tver, Ivan depopulated all the towns on his route to the banks of the Ilmen: and on the 2d of January his advanced guard entered the devoted and miserable city of Novgorod. The preparations made upon this occasion to ensure the complete carnage meditated by the tyrant, are memorable proofs of the coolness with which the demons of the Opritshnina executed the will of their savage leader. They ordered the churches and convents to be closed, and demanded a temporary levy from the monks of twenty roubles per head; and such unfortunate ecclesiastics as were unable to comply with this exorbitant exaction were deliberately flogged from morning till night. The houses of the inhabitants were placed under seizure, and guarded at the entrances, and the owners thrown into chains. This was merely preliminary to the arrival of the monarch.

In four days afterwards Ivan and the remainder arrived, and rested within two versts of the city. On the following morning all the monks who had failed to pay the redemption tax were taken out, beaten to death with clubs, and their bodies sent to their respective monasteries for interment. On the next day, accompanied as before by his son, Ivan made his solemn entrance at the head of his troops into the city. The archbishop, with the clergy, carrying the miraculous images, met him on the bridge, and attempted to utter the accustomed benediction: but Ivan, interrupting the ceremony, addressed them in a long harangue, which consisted of an elaborate curse against their order. Having satisfied his rage by the delivery of this anathema, he ordered the crucifix and images to be borne into the church of St. Sophia, where he heard mass, praying with great fervour, and then retired to the episcopal palace, where he sat down to dinner surrounded by his boyars. Suddenly, in the midst of the feast, he started up and raised a terrible cry. The signal was scarcely given when his satellites, as if by magic, appeared in a body before him, and seized the archbishop, and the officers and servants. The palace and the cloisters were then given up to plunder. The czar’s confessor, assisted in the sacrilege by the master of the ceremonies, burst into the cathedral and carried off its sacred treasures, the rich vestments, the images, and the bells. The churches and monasteries were all pillaged, and not a fragment of the precious accumulations of the temples and religious houses escaped the impious hands of the spoliators.

Next came the massacre of the inhabitants, which was conducted with the utmost patience and regularity. Every day from five hundred to one thousand Novgorodians were brought before Ivan and his son, and immediately put to death either by torture or fire. Some were tied to sledges and dragged into the Volkhov; others flung over the bridge into the river—wives with their husbands, mothers with their tender infants; while soldiers armed with long sharp spears sailed on the water to pierce and hew those who attempted to escape by swimming. When the massacre had continued in this way for five weeks, Ivan drew off and visited the neighbouring monasteries, which he pillaged indiscriminately, levelling houses, destroying cattle, and burning the corn. He then returned to Novgorod, and inspected in person the remaining work of destruction. He passed through the streets while his myrmidons plundered the shops and houses, which were entered by the doors or windows indifferently: rich silks and furs were divided by the brutal soldiery, and all unavailable goods, such as hemp and wax and tallow, were either burnt or cast into the river. Detachments were then sent into the adjacent domains to plunder and murder without any respect of persons.

Having exhausted all his arts of ruin, Ivan now relaxed, and issued a general pardon to the few wretched persons who survived, and to whom death would have been an act of mercy. He summoned them to appear before him; and a ghastly assemblage of skeletons, motionless and in despair, stood in the presence of the murderer like ghosts invoked from the grave. Untouched by the appalling sight, he addressed them in the mildest language, desired to have their prayers that he might have a long and happy reign, and took his leave of them in the most gracious words. The miserable inhabitants were smote with delirium; they looked around them in vain for the friends that had been sacrificed, for the houses and the wealth that had been laid waste. Sixty thousand victims were stretched dead in the streets of the once proud and opulent republic: and to complete its melancholy doom, pestilence and a famine succeeded, sweeping off nearly all those who had survived the extermination of the less merciful czar. The city was now entirely depopulated, and presented the sepulchral aspect of a vast cemetery.

The monster passed on to the city of Pskov, where, however, he consented to forego his terrible schemes of destruction, satisfying himself with plundering the principal inhabitants. He then returned home to Moscow, loaded with plunder, and carrying in his train the archbishop of Novgorod, and other distinguished victims, whom he reserved for a public execution.

CARNAGE IN MOSCOW

He had no sooner arrived in Moscow than he caused several of his favourites to be arrested on the ground of suspicion, but really in order to increase the number of the wretches he designed to put to death; and thus, naming a day for a general execution of the whole, extensive preparations were made in the market place to carry his inhuman project into execution. Eighteen gibbets were erected, numberless instruments of torture were exhibited, and a great fire was made in the centre, over which a huge copper cauldron was suspended. The inhabitants, seeing these dreadful preliminaries, believed that the czar’s object was to set the city on fire, and consign the people to death; and, flying from the spot, they abandoned their shops and merchandise, leaving their property to the mercy of the select legion. In a few hours Moscow was utterly deserted, and not a living person was to be seen but a troop of the Opritshnina ranged in gloomy silence round the gibbets and blazing fire. Presently the beating of drums rose upon the air, and the czar was seen advancing on horseback, accompanied by his favourite son, and followed by his devoted guards. In the rear came the spectral troop of victims, in number about three hundred, wan and bloody, and hardly able to crawl upon the ground. On perceiving that the theatre of carnage was destitute of an audience, Ivan commanded his soldiers to collect the inhabitants; and, after a short pause, finding that they did not arrive with promptitude, he went in person to demand their presence at the treat he had prepared for them, assuring them at the same time of the good-will he entertained towards them. The wretched Muscovites dared not disobey him, and hurrying in terror from their hiding places, they crowded to the scene of execution, which was speedily filled with spectators even to the roofs of the houses. Then the dreadful rites began. The czar addressed the people with exclamations upon the righteousness of the punishments he was about to inflict, and the people, oppressed with horror, replied in terms of approbation. A crowd of one hundred and twenty victims, who were declared to be less guilty than the rest, were first separated from the others and pardoned. The condemned were called one by one, and some, after hearing the accusation in general terms from the lips of the czar, accompanied by occasional blows on the head from a whip which he held in his hand, were given over to the assassins, who hung them up by the feet, and then cut them to pieces, or plunged them half alive into the boiling cauldron. These executions, which are too horrible to be related in detail, lasted for about four hours; during which time nearly two hundred victims, innocent of the crimes with which they were charged, suffered deaths of the most exquisite and prolonged agony.

A despotism so sanguinary and so wanton was well calculated to endanger the safety of those institutions which the wisdom of others had established. Russia, distracted through all her provinces by the atrocities of Ivan, soon became a prey to those unwearied foes who never lost an opportunity of taking advantage of her domestic difficulties. The declaration of Ivan’s supremacy to his unfortunate subjects was, “I am your god as God is mine; whose throne is surrounded by archangels, as is the throne of God.” But this piece of blasphemy, which had the effect of making the Russians tremble, only increased the determination of his external enemies. Sweden had already wrested Esthonia from him; Kettler, the last grand-master of the Livonian knights, satisfied himself with Courland and Semigallia; while Battori of Poland, the successor of Sigismund Augustus, deprived him of Livonia, one of the most important points in his dominions. In 1566, Ivan laid before an assembly of the states-general, consisting of a convocation of ecclesiastics, nobles, citizens, and traders, a statement of his negotiations with Poland on the subject of Livonia; but as his real object was to assert his tyrannical power rather than to gain the political advantages he pointed out, the issue of the assembly was merely an admission from all the parties present that the will of the czar was indisputable, and that they had no right even to tender him their advice. The great advantage of recovering Livonia from Poland was obviously to secure it as an outlet upon the Baltic for Russian commerce, and as a means of opening a communication with Europe. To the ministry of Sylvester and Adaschev belongs the credit of this admirable project; but a design which they would have accomplished with comparative facility, was suffered by Ivan to be wasted in fruitless contentions.

Battori terrified Ivan in the midst of his tyrannies; and the monster who could visit his people with such an example of cruelties, crouched before the king of Poland. His fear of Battori carried him to extremes. He not only supplicated terms at his hands, but suffered him to offer personal insults to the officers who represented the czar at his court. The grovelling measures and cowardice of Ivan disgusted his adversary; and in reply to some fresh instance of dastardly submission, Battori charged him with the grossest crimes—with having falsified the articles of treaties, and applied inhuman tortures to his peoples. The letter containing these strong, but just, animadversions, closed with a challenge to single combat, which the poverty of the czar’s spirit met by renewed protestations of the most abject character.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIVONIA

At length, urged by the clamour of his advisers, Ivan organised an army of three hundred thousand men; but, although he could instigate and assist at the most revolting punishments, he shrunk from a personal share in the numerous petty conflicts which took place between his forces and the Livonian knights. Instead of advancing boldly upon the enemy, who could not have maintained war against the superior numbers of the Russians, he suffered himself to be shielded by a jesuit, the pope’s envoy, whose intercession with Battori he had procured by representing, with consummate audacity, that he hoped to be able to effect the conversion of the Russians to catholicism. Whenever he fell in with the Livonians, and the collision terminated in victory, he committed the wildest excesses: plundered the captives of their wealth, which he transmitted to his own private coffers, and then sentenced the prisoners to be flung into boiling cauldrons, spitted on lances, or roasted at fires which he amused himself by stirring—while the sacrificial murders were in progress. Wars so irregularly conducted, and terminating in such frightful revenge could not but entail calamities upon the empire. All that was gained by the long struggle for Livonia, was the occasional plunder which Ivan appropriated to himself.

To support the system of profligate expenditure to which the whole life of this extraordinary man inevitably led, he laid on the most exorbitant taxes, and lent himself to the most unjust monopolies. Nor was he satisfied with exceeding in this way the most arbitrary examples that had preceded him; but, with a recklessness of human life, and a disregard of the common decencies and obligations of the worst condition of society, he proceeded to rifle his subjects of their private means, sometimes upon slight pretences, but oftener without any pretence whatever. It would almost appear that his appetite for sights of destruction had palled with ordinary gratification; and that he had jaded his invention to discover new modes of cruelty. Having exhausted in all its varieties the mere art of slaughter, he proceeded to make his objects violate before his eyes the sacred feelings of nature. He demanded fratricide and parricide at their hands: one man was forced to kill his father, another his brother: eight hundred women were drowned, and, bursting into the houses of his victims, he compelled the survivors to point out the places where the remnant of their wealth was concealed. His excesses carried him beyond all law, human and divine. He assumed the place, and even usurped the attributes of the Deity, and identified himself to a proverb with the Creator. Not content with indulging his insane passions in the frenzy of an undisciplined mind, he trampled the usages of Russia under foot, and married seven wives—which was held by the tenets of the Greek religion to be a crime of great magnitude.[g]

PROJECTS OF ALLIANCE WITH ENGLAND

[1582-1584 A.D.]

The unfortunate issue of the war with Sweden did not however make Ivan the Terrible give up the idea of compensating himself for his losses; he continued to seek for alliances with European states. With this object Theodore Pissemski was sent to England in 1582 with instructions to endeavour to bring about a close alliance with Elizabeth against his enemy the king of Poland, and at the same time to enter into matrimonial negotiations for the czar with the queen’s relative, Maria Hastings. The English would not entertain either project, but only sought to obtain an exemption from entry duties for their trade with Russia. In 1583 Jeremiah Bowes was sent to Moscow from England with the delicate mission of attaining this object. The negotiations dragged on a long time; first the czar sent away Bowes and then recalled him again, and in fact they had not come to an end before the death of Ivan the Terrible.[b]

DEATH OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE

[1584 A.D.]

We have already seen what was the life of Ivan: we shall now see its ending—which was equally astonishing—desirable indeed for mankind, but terrifying to the imagination; for the tyrant died as he had lived, that is, exterminating men, although in contemporary narratives there is no mention of his last victims.[33] Strong in bodily constitution, Ivan had hoped for a long life; but what bodily strength could withstand the furious rage of the passions that agitated the sombre existence of the tyrant? The continued outbursts of wrath and fear, the racking of the unrepentant conscience, the odious transports of abominable sensuality, the torments of shame, the impotent fury at the reverses of his arms, finally the horrible remembrance of the murder of his own son, had exhausted the measure of Ivan’s strength. At times he experienced a painful languor, the precursory symptom of dissolution, but he struggled against it and did not noticeably weaken until the winter of the year 1584. At that time a comet appeared in the sky between the churches of Ivan the Great and of the Annunciation, which had the form of a cross. Curious to see it, Ivan went out on the red staircase, gazed at it long, grew pale, and said to those around him: “there is the portent of my death.” Pursued by this idea, it is said that he caused astrologers and pretended magicians to be sought for throughout Russia and Lapland, brought together about sixty of them, assigned to them a house in Moscow, and daily sent his favourite Belski, to confer with them concerning the comet. Soon he fell dangerously ill. It is said that the astrologers predicted his death on the 18th of March. During February he was still able to occupy himself with affairs; but on the 10th of March a courier was despatched to delay the arrival of the Lithuanian ambassador who was on his way to Moscow, by reason of the illness of the czar. Ivan himself had given the order; he had still hopes of recovery, nevertheless he called together the boyars and commanded that his will and testament should be written down. He declared the czarevitch Theodore heir to the throne and monarchy, and chose well-known men for councillors to watch over the prosperity of the state and lighten for Theodore (who was feeble both in mind and body) the burden of the cares of the state; these men were: Prince Ivan Petrovitch Shuiski (the famous defender of Pskov), Ivan Mstislavski, son of a niece of the grand prince Vasili, Nikita Romanovitch Iuriev (brother of Ivan’s first wife, the virtuous Anastasia), Boris Godunov, and Belski. To the young Dmitri and his mother he assigned the town of Uglitch as appanage, the boy’s education to be exclusively confided to Belski. He declared his gratitude to all his boyars and voyevods, calling them his friends and companions in arms in the conquest of unbelieving kingdoms, in the victories gained over the knights of the Livonian order, the khan, and the sultan. He exhorted Theodore to rule piously, lovingly and mercifully, advising him and the five chief dignitaries of the state to avoid war with Christian powers. He spoke of the disastrous consequences of the wars with Lithuania and Sweden, deplored the exhaustion of Russia, enjoined a reduction of the taxes and the liberation of all captives, even of the Lithuanian and German prisoners.

The strength of the sick man presently left him; his thoughts were beclouded; stretched in unconsciousness upon his bed, Ivan called loudly for his murdered son, imagined he saw him and spoke to him tenderly. On the 17th of March he felt better from the effects of a warm bath, so that he commanded the Lithuanian ambassador to come without delay from Mozhaisk to Moscow. The next day (if Horsey is to be believed) he said to Belski, “Go and tell those liars, the astrologers, that they shall die: according to their fables I am to die now, but I feel a great deal better.” But, answered the astrologers, the day has not yet passed. A bath was again prepared for the czar in which he remained about three hours, then he lay down on his bed and rested. Soon he asked for a chessboard, and sitting up in bed in his dressing-gown, he himself set up the chessmen and wanted to play with Belski.[34] Suddenly he fell back and closed his eyes for all eternity. The doctors rubbed him with strengthening fluids, while the metropolitan—probably fulfilling the will of Ivan that had been long known to him—read the prayers for the taking of orders over the dying man, giving him the monastic names of Jonas. During these moments a deep silence reigned throughout the palace and the capital; people waited in expectancy, but nobody dared to ask. Ivan lay already dead, yet he appeared still terrible to the surrounding courtiers, who for a long time could not believe their eyes and did not announce his death. On the third day magnificent obsequies took place in the church of St. Michael.

KARAMZIN’S ESTIMATE OF IVAN

Amidst the various and heavy trials imposed by destiny on Russia, besides the miseries of the feudal or appanage system, besides the Mongolian yoke, Russia had also to bear the ferocity of the autocrat-tormentor: yet she preserved her love for autocracy, believing that plagues, earthquakes and tyrants are sent by God. Instead of breaking the iron sceptre in the hands of Ivan, she bore for twenty-four years with the destroyer, arming herself solely with prayer and patience in order that in happier times she might have a Peter the Great, a Catherine II (history does not like to name the living[35]). Magnanimously submissive, the martyrs died on the scaffold like the Greeks at Thermopylæ, for their country, their faith and fealty, without thought of rebellion or riot. In order to excuse Ivan’s cruelties some foreign historians have spoken of plots and conspiracies against which they were directed; but such plots only existed in the troubled mind of the czar, as all our chronicles and state papers bear witness. The clergy, the boyars, the prominent citizens would not have called forth the wild beast from his lair of Alexandrovski, if they had had thoughts of the treachery imputed to them with as much absurdity as witchcraft. No, the tiger gorged himself with the blood of the lambs, and his victims, casting a last glance on the distressful earth, demanded from their contemporaries and from posterity both justice and compassionate remembrance.

In spite of all speculative explanations, the character of Ivan, a virtuous hero in his youth, and an insatiable, bloody tyrant in the years of his manhood and old age, remains an enigma, and we should doubt the truth of the most trustworthy narratives concerning him, if the history of other nations did not show us equally astonishing examples; if for instance Caligula, at first a model for sovereigns and afterwards a monster of cruelty—if Nero, the pupil of the wise Seneca, an object of love and an object of loathing, had not reigned at Rome.

Thus Ivan possessed a superior intellect, he was not uneducated, and his knowledge was united to an uncommon gift of speech, yet he was the shameless slave of the most abominable vices. He had an unusually fine memory, he knew the Bible by heart, he was also well acquainted with Greek and Roman history, besides the history of his own country, and only used his knowledge in order to give the most absurd interpretations in favour of tyranny. He boasted of his firmness and self control, because he could laugh loudly in the hour of fear and of inward uneasiness. He boasted of his clemency and generosity, because he enriched his favourites with the possessions of the boyars and citizens who had fallen into disgrace. He boasted of his justice, and punished with equal satisfaction the meritorious and the criminal. He boasted of his sovereign spirit and of knowing how to maintain the sovereign dignity, ordering that an elephant which had been sent to him from Persia should be cut to pieces because the animal would not kneel before him, and cruelly punishing the unfortunate courtiers who dared to play at cards or chess better than his majesty. Finally he prided himself on his deep statecraft in exterminating systematically, at certain fixed epochs, with cold blooded calculation, some of the most illustrious families under the pretext of their being dangerous to the royal power; raising to their rank new and mean families; touching with his destroying hand even the future, for like a swarm of famine-bringing insects, the band of informers, of calumniators, of “opritchniki”[36] that he had formed, left, as they disappeared, the seed of evil among the people, and if the yoke of Bati had lowered the spirit of the Russians, there is no doubt that the reign of Ivan did nothing to raise it.

But justice must be rendered even to a tyrant: even in the extremity of evil, Ivan at times seems the phantom, as it were, of a great monarch, zealous, unwearying, often showing proofs of great penetration in state matters. For valour he liked to compare himself to Alexander of Macedonia, although there was not a shadow of courage in his soul: yet he was a conqueror; in his outward policy he followed unswervingly the great schemes of his grandfather. He wanted justice to be observed in the tribunals, and not frequently himself examined the lawsuits, listened to complaints, read every paper laid before him, and was prompt in his decisions. He punished the oppressors of the people, unscrupulous functionaries, and extortioners, both corporally and by putting them to shame (he had them clothed in sumptuous attire, seated in carts and driven by the hangmen through the streets). He forbade all drunken excesses and only allowed the people to divert themselves in the public houses during the Easter holidays and at Christmastide; at every other time drunken people were sent to prison. Although he did not like daring reproaches, yet at times Ivan detested coarse flattery; of the latter we will give an instance: The voyevods, the princes Shtcherbati and Iri Boriatinski, who had been ransomed by the czar from captivity in Lithuania, were honoured with his favour, were given presents, and had the distinction of dining with him. He questioned them about Lithuania. Shtcherbati spoke the truth, but Boriatinski lied shamelessly, averring that the king had neither troops nor fortresses and trembled at the name of Ivan. “Poor king!” said Ivan quietly, shaking his head: “how I pity thee!” and suddenly seizing his staff he broke it to splinters over Boriatinski’s back, saying: “Take that, you shameless fellow, for your flagrant lying!”

Cathedral of St. Basil, Moscow

(Built by Ivan the Terrible, who considered it so beautiful that he had the architect’s eyes put out that he might not build another)

Ivan was distinguished by a wise tolerance in matters of religion (excepting that of the Jews); but although he at first allowed the Lutherans and the Calvinists to have churches in Moscow, five years later he ordered their churches to be burned. It is possible, however, that he had heard of the people’s dissatisfaction and was afraid of some scandal; in any case he did not hinder their meeting for worship in the houses of their pastors. He was fond of disputing with learned Germans upon matters of faith and was not angry at contradiction: thus in the year 1570 he had a solemn discussion in the palace of the Kremlin with the Lutheran theologian Rotsita, whom he accused of heresy: Rotsita was seated before him on a raised platform covered with rich carpets; he spoke boldly in defence of the dogmas of the Augsburg Confession, and was honoured with tokens of the czar’s favour.

Ivan evinced esteem for the arts and sciences, showing marks of favour to educated foreigners. Although he did not found academies, yet he contributed to popular education by increasing the number of ecclesiastical schools where the laity also could study reading, writing, religion, and even history, and in particular prepare to become clerks in the chanceries; to the shame of the boyars, many of whom were not yet able to write. Finally Ivan is famous in Russian history as a lawgiver and organiser of the state.[f]

IVAN THE TERRIBLE COMPARED WITH PETER THE GREAT

Deeply tragic were the life and destiny of Ivan the Terrible! As we penetrate into the full signification of his work, we are involuntarily drawn to the comparison which suggests itself between him and the hero czar of the eighteenth century. It was not without reason that, according to tradition, Peter looked upon Ivan as his precursor: they had both entertained the same projects. Even in the circumstances of their childhood and early youth there were points of resemblance; but Ivan had not a tender, loving mother at his side, and this difference was an essential one. There is also another very essential difference: by nature Ivan was a man of more abstract character, less capable of and less inclined to practical activity; for this reason he at times confided in others, then suddenly became suspicious, but never acted himself. It appeared to him that the duty of a czar was only to direct the activity of others. Although this is a true view in ordinary times, it may sometimes become a false one, and Peter served Russia as much with the carpenter’s hatchet as he did with the sword of Pultowa. The practical Peter believed in his people, and if at times he overstrained the bow, yet it was as if he felt that matters would adjust themselves. Ivan lost faith in everything and everyone; it may also be added that Peter thought less of himself and in this respect he was larger minded than his terrible predecessor. The painful impression produced on the historian by Ivan’s trying to secure a refuge in England, has no parallel in the life of Peter. Also, however terrible were the executions and punishments in the time of Peter, and although at times there may be observed in them signs of personal irritation, yet the impression produced by the narrative of the devastations in Novgorod is still more distressing. Practical statesmen never go to such lengths as abstract theorists: Peter never entered into theoretical controversies, which were foreign to his nature. For the same reason Peter, however well disposed he might be towards foreigners, always counted himself a Russian, while Ivan took pleasure in tracing the descent of his race from Cæsar Augustus. It was also for this reason that Peter could not entirely abase himself in sensual delights; he had too much work on his hands; his was a practical, not a contemplative nature. And this is one of the principal causes of Peter’s success and Ivan’s failure; another and more important reason lies in the fact that Russia was weaker in the time of the Terrible czar than in the time of Peter the Great.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[24] From ókolo, about, around—persons about the czar.

[25] Gospodá, plural of gospodin.

[26] Literally “beat his forehead.”

[27] Daughter of Stephen, Gospodin of Moldavia, married to Ivan’s son Ivan.

[28] [A title borne by the Russian emperors.]

[29] Mengli Girai’s rivals: Adir, Nordovlat, and Zenebek, fled to Moscow and were detained by Ivan, who thus rendered Mengli Girai a service at the same time that he held out their liberation as a tacit menace.[a]

[30] Soloviov[h] decisively confutes the story that the cause of Ahmed’s retreat was the destruction of Sarai by Nordovlat.

[31] Thus the courtiers regarded it as a matter of course that he should take away from his envoys the gifts made to them by the sovereigns to whom they had been accredited.

[32] [The Opritshnina, composed at first, or proposed to be composed, of men of noble birth, was really filled by persons of the lowest class, who acted as spies, informers and assassins.]

[33] Oderborn says that a few days before his death Ivan had six noblemen executed. In other narratives it is only said that he destroyed men up to the very end of his life.

[34] The historian Kostomarov relates that Ivan could not set the king in its place and fell back dead as he endeavoured to do so.

[35] [A compliment to Alexander I, the author’s patron.]

[36] The life guards of Ivan the Terrible.