Strange Stories from History for Young People

by George Cary Eggleston

Meanwhile, his genius for governing upon the Gluiskian system lay dormant. It was not dead, but slept, and after its nap of thirteen years it awoke one day, refreshed. Anastasia, the beautiful queen whose influence had been supreme for so long a time, died, and Ivan was free again. He recalled an old bishop who had been banished for his crimes, and consulted him as to his future course.

"If you wish to be truly a sovereign," said this eminent prelate, "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 boyards. Remember that he who is permitted to begin by advising is certain to end by ruling his sovereign."

Here was advice of a sort suited to Ivan's taste and education, and for reply he kissed the good bishop's hand, saying:

"My own father could not have spoken more wisely."

That the czar spoke sincerely, his faithfulness in following the bishop's precepts abundantly attests.

His ministers and advisers being manifestly wiser than he, and therefore not at all the proper kind of people to have about, he straightway banished them. He then began a diligent search for their partisans, some of whom he put to death, condemning others to imprisonment and torture. He next turned his attention to his own household, which he was resolved upon ruling absolutely, at least, if not well. One of the princes made himself disagreeable by declining to participate freely in the pleasures of the palace, and, for the sake of domestic harmony, Ivan had him poniarded while he was at his prayers. Another so far overstepped the bounds of courtesy and propriety as to remonstrate with one of the new favorites upon his improper conduct, and Ivan, in order that there might be no bickerings and hard feelings in his family, slew the discourteous prince with his own hand.

He was in the habit of carrying an iron rod about with him, and he had a playful way of striking his friends with it now and then, merely for his amusement. His pleasantries of this and like sorts were endless. One day Prince Boris, a boyard, came to pay his respects to the czar, and as be bowed to the ground, according to custom, Ivan, seizing a knife, said, "God bless thee, my dear Boris; thou deservest a proof of my favor," and with that he kindly cut the nobleman's ear off.

When Prince Kurbsky, whom he had threatened with death, fled to Poland and wrote him a letter thence, telling him pretty plainly what he thought of him, the czar playfully struck the bearer of the missive with his iron rod, as a preliminary to the reading of the letter, and the blood flowed copiously from the man's wounds while Ivan pondered the words of his rebellious subject. He then became convinced that the boyards generally sympathized with Kurbsky, and to teach them better he put a good many of them to death by torture, and deprived many others of their estates. His alarm was very real, however, for he was a phenomenon of abject cowardice. He therefore fled to a fortified place in the midst of a dense forest, where he remained a month, writing letters to the Russians, telling them that he had abdicated and left them to their fate as a punishment for their disloyalty and their crimes. Singularly enough, his flight terrified the people. He had taught them that he was their god as God was his, and his flight to Alexandrovsky seemed to them a withdrawal of the protection of Providence itself. Business was suspended. The courts ceased to sit. The country was in an agony of terror. A large deputation of boyards and priests journeyed to Alexandrovsky, and besought the sovereign to return and resume his holy functions as the head of the church, that the souls of so many millions might not perish. Exacting of clergy and nobles an admission of his absolute right to do as he pleased, and a promise that they would in no way interfere with or resist his authority, he returned to Moscow. Here he surrounded himself with a body-guard of desperadoes, one thousand strong at first, and afterwards increased to six thousand, whose duty it was to discover the czar's enemies and to sweep them from the face of the earth. As emblems of these their functions, each member of the guard carried at his saddle-bow a dog's head and a broom. As the punishment of the czar's enemies included the confiscation of their property, a large part of which was given to the guards themselves, these were always singularly successful in discovering the disaffection of wealthy nobles, finding it out oftentimes before the nobles themselves were aware of their own treasonable sentiments.

Feeling unsafe still, Ivan built for himself a new palace, outside the walls of the Kremlin, making it an impregnable castle. Then, finding that even this did not lull his shaken nerves to rest, he proceeded to put danger afar off by dispossessing the twelve thousand rich nobles whose estates lay nearest the palace, and giving their property to his personal followers, so that the head which wore the crown might lie easy in the conviction that there were no possible enemies near on the other side of the impregnable walls which shut him in. But even then he could not sleep easily, and so he repaired again to his forest stronghold at Alexandrovsky, where he surrounded himself with guards and ramparts. Here he converted the palace into a monastery, made himself abbot, and his rascally followers monks. He rigorously enforced monastic observances of the severest sort, and no doubt became a saint, in his own estimation. He spent most of his time at prayers, allowing himself no recreation except a daily sight of the torture of the prisoners who were confined in the dungeons of the fortress. His guards were allowed rather a larger share of amusement, and they wandered from street to street during the day, punishing, with their hatchets, such disloyal persons as they encountered. They were very moderate in their indulgences, however, in imitation of their sovereign, doubtless, and it is recorded to their credit, that, at this time, they rarely killed more than twenty people in one day, while sometimes the number was as low as five.

But a quiet life of this kind could not always content the czar. Naturally, he grew tired of individual killings, and began to long for some more exciting sport. When, one day, a quarrel arose between some of his guards and a few of the people of Torjek, Ivan saw at a glance that all the inhabitants of Torjek were mutinous rebels, and of course it became his duty to put them all to death, which he straightway did.