It is said that sixty thousand people were slain by Ivan's orders in Novgorod alone; how many perished in the whole realm history does not relate. His only warlike campaign was against the Livonians. These he failed to conquer, but held their resistance as a rebellion, and ordered his prisoners to be thrown into boiling caldrons, spitted on lances, or roasted at fires which he stirred up with his own hands.
This monster of iniquity married in all seven wives. He sought for an eighth from the court of Queen Elizabeth of England, and the daughter of the Earl of Huntington was offered him as a victim,—a willing one, it seems, influenced by the glamour which power exerts over the mind; but before the match was concluded the intended bride took fright, and begged to be spared the terrible honor of wedding the Russian czar.
Yet all the excesses of Ivan did not turn the people against him. He assumed the manner of one inspired, claiming divine powers, and all the injuries and degradation which he inflicted upon the people were accepted not only with resignation but with adoration. The Russians of that age of ignorance seem to have looked upon God and the czar as one, and submitted to blows, wounds, and insults with a blind servility to which only abject superstition could have led.
CHURCH AND TOWER OF IVAN THE GREAT.
The end came at last, in a final freak of madness. An humble supplication, coming from the most faithful of his subjects, was made to him; but in his distorted brain it indicated a new conspiracy of the boyars, of which his eldest and ablest son was to be the leader. In a transport of insane rage the frenzied emperor raised his iron-bound staff and struck to the earth with a mortal blow this hope of his race.
This was his last excess. Regret for his hasty act, though not remorse for his murders, assailed him, and he soon after died, after twenty-six years of insane cruelties, ordering new executions almost with his latest breath.