Thus the Grand Prince conquered Novgorod, sparing it this first time, and seeming not to entirely deprive it of independence. With his usual caution, he did not bring men to despair; he left his final blow for another day. A wise man might have foreseen easily that such a day was inevitable, and in the near future. Ivan had the strength to wait for it.
How pleasing and how popular the victory was in Moscow was shown by the welcome which that city gave the Grand Prince at his coming. People in thousands went a number of versts from the city to greet him. The metropolitan and the clergy met him with banners and crosses. His son and attendants were waiting one day’s journey from the city.
While men of Moscow were rejoicing in this way, an evil fate seemed to frown upon Novgorod. After all the reverses and plunders a new misfortune came to that place. Among people from outside who had fled to the city were families from Russa. After peace was made, they took boats and were sailing homeward by Lake Ilmen when a dreadful tempest rose and drowned nearly all of them. It is said that seven thousand died in the water. In Novgorod itself there were fires which raged with great havoc. [[463]]
CHAPTER XX
DOWNFALL OF THE HORDE
In 1471 Feofil, the archbishop, was anointed in Moscow, and obtained from the Grand Prince release for boyars in detention. The next year Ivan married Sophia Palaeologus, a niece of Constantine, the last Emperor of Constantinople. Ivan’s first wife, Maria, a Tver princess, had died six years earlier. When the Turks captured Tsargrad, in 1453, the younger brothers of the Emperor, Dmitri and Thomas, were despots or rulers in Negropont, but instead of helping each other, they exhausted their forces in fighting, and in 1460 their possessions fell to the Osmanli. Dmitri yielded to Mohammed II, gave him a daughter for his harem, and lived upon Mussulman bounty. But Thomas, a prouder and more determined man than his brother, left his wife in Corfu, and journeyed to Rome, thinking to find there not merely a refuge, but aid to win back his dominion.
The papal throne was then held by the well-known Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who was Pope Pius II. He received very cordially this Palaeologus, who had remained faithful to the Florentine union, and assigned him a generous pension. Thomas brought to the Pope a most precious relic: the head of Saint Andrew, which was met with great honor by the clergy and placed in St. Peter’s. To this relic the former despot added another: the hand of John the Baptist. Pius II now announced a crusade to expel the Osmanli, and wished to take personal part in it, but death struck him soon, and Palaeologus himself died the following year, 1465, while waiting for his family, which had already reached Ancona.
His eldest child, Helena, a widow of Lazar II, the Serbian king, retired to a convent; two sons, and Zoe (Sophia), a daughter, still remained. They settled in Rome under papal protection. By [[464]]the will of their father their guardian was Vissarion, that cardinal who, after Isidor’s death, was made titular Patriarch of Tsargrad. He had the young men and their sister reared carefully, and strove to inspire them with attachment, not to church union alone, but to the Latin Church specially. Princess Sophia had not passed out of childhood when both the Pope and Vissarion were seeking a husband for her among princely houses in Italy, and elsewhere. But those efforts ended unsuccessfully, partly because the girl had no dowry, and partly because of intriguing.
Vissarion’s attention rested at last on Ivan of Moscow. It was no great task to incline the Pope toward this marriage. It is known that the Curia strove to bring Russia to its spiritual guidance whenever a chance came. What Isidor had not accomplished, that is, the union of the Churches, the Pope now planned to effect through Sophia. Moreover he saw in Ivan fresh aid against the Osmanli.