During the night of the 12th of February, 1446, the conspirators entered the Kremlin. Vassali, who attempted to compensate for his neglect of true religion by punctilious and ostentatious observance of ecclesiastical rites, was in the church of the Trinity attending a midnight mass. Silently the conspirators surrounded the church with their troops. Vassali was prostrate upon the tomb of a Russian saint, apparently absorbed in devotion. Soon the alarm was given, and the prince, in a paroxysm of terror, threw himself upon his knees, and for once, at least, in his life, prayed with sincerity and fervor. His pathetic cries to God for help caused many of the nobles around him to weep. The prince was immediately seized, no opposition being offered, and was confined in one of the palaces of Moscow. Four nights after his capture, some agents of the conspirators entered his apartment and tore out his eyes, as he had torn out the eyes of his cousin. He was then sent, with his wife, to a castle in a distant city, and his children were immured in a convent. Dmitri Chemyaka, the prime mover of this conspiracy, now assumed the reins of government. Gradually the grand principality had
lost its power over the other principalities of the empire, and Russia was again, virtually, a conglomeration of independent states.
Public opinion now turned so sternly against Chemyaka, and such bitter murmurs rose around his throne for the cruelty he had practiced upon Vassali, that he felt constrained to liberate the prince, and to assign him a residence of splendor upon the shores of lake Kouben. Chemyaka, thus constrained to set the body of his captive free, wished to enchain his soul by the most solemn oaths. With all his court he visited Vassali. The blinded prince, with characteristic duplicity, expressed heartfelt penitence in view of his past course, and took the most solemn oaths never to attempt to disturb the reign of his conqueror.
Vassali received the city of Vologda in appanage, to which he retired, with his family, and with the nobles and bishops who still adhered to him. But a few months had passed ere he, with his friends, had enlisted the coöperation of many princes, and especially of the Tartar horde, and was on the march with a strong army to drive Chemyaka from Moscow. Chemyaka, utterly discomfited, fled, and Moscow fell easily into the hands of Vassali the blind.
Anguish of body and of soul seems now to have changed the nature of Vassali, and with energy, disinterestedness and wisdom undeveloped before, he consecrated himself to the welfare of his country. He associated with himself his young son Ivan, who subsequently attained the title of the Great. "But Chemyaka," writes Karamsin, "still lived, and his heart, ferocious, implacable, sought new means of vengeance. His death seemed necessary for the safety of the state, and some one gave him poison, of which he died the next day. The author, of an action so contrary to religion, to the principles of morality and of honor, remains unknown. A lawyer, named Beda, who conveyed the news of his death to Moscow, was elevated to the rank of secretary by the grand
prince, who exhibited on that occasion an indiscreet joy." On the 14th of March, 1462, Vassali terminated his eventful and tumultuous life, at the age of forty-seven. His reign was during one of the darkest periods in the Russian annals. Life to him, and to his cotemporaries, was but a pitiless tempest, through which hardly one ray of sunshine penetrated. It was under his reign that the horrible punishment of the knout was introduced into Moscow, a barbaric mode of scourging unknown to the ancient Russians. Fire-arms were also beginning to be introduced, which weapons have diminished rather than increased the carnage of fields of battle.
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[3] For an account of the romantic circumstances attending this marriage, see Empire of Austria, pp. 53 and 54.