[Illustration: The Czar Iván the Terrible and his son Iván Ivánovitch. From the painting by I. E. Répin.]
Leo X. was soon too much occupied with a new foe to think about designs upon Constantinople. A certain monk was nailing a protest upon the door of the Church at Wittenburg which would tax to the uttermost his energies. As from time to time travelers brought back tales of the splendor of the Muscovite court, Europe was more than ever afraid of such neighbors. What might these powerful barbarians not do, if they adopted European methods! More stringent measures were enforced. They must not have access to the implements of civilization, and Sigismund, King of Poland, threatened English merchants on the Baltic with death.
It is a singular circumstance that although, up to the time of Ivan the Great, Russia had apparently not one thing in common with the states of Western Europe, they were still subject to the same great tides or tendencies and were moving simultaneously toward identical political conditions. An invisible but compelling hand had been upon every European state, drawing the power from many heads into one. In Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella had brought all the smaller kingdoms and the Moors under one united crown. In France, Louis XI. had shattered the fabric of feudalism, and by artful alliance with the people had humiliated and subjugated the proud nobility. Henry VIII. had established absolutism in England, and Maximilian had done the same for Germany, while even the Italian republics, were being gathered into the hands of larger sovereignties. From this distance in time it is easy to see the prevailing direction in which all the nations were being irresistibly drawn.
The hour had struck for the tide to flow toward centralisation; and Russia, remote, cut off from all apparent connection with the Western kingdoms, was borne along upon the same tide with the rest, as if it was already a part of the same organism! There, too, the power was passing from the many to one: first from many ruling families to one family, then from all the individual members of that family to a supreme and permanent head—the Tsar.
There were many revolutions in Russia from the time when the Dolgorukis turned the life-currents from Kief to the North; many centers of volcanic energy in fearful state of activity, and many times when ruin threatened from every side. But in the midst of all this there was one steady process—one end being always approached—a consolidation and a centralization of authority before which European monarchies would pale! The process commenced with the autocratic purposes of Andrew Bogoliubski. And it was because his boyars instinctively knew that the success of his policy meant their ruin that they assassinated him.
In "Old Russia" a close and fraternal tie bound the Prince and his Drujina together. It was one family, of which he was the adored head. What characterized the "New Russia" was a growing antagonism between the Grand Prince and his lords or boyars. This developed into a life-and-death struggle, similar to that between Louis XI. and his nobility. His elevation meant their humiliation. It was a terrible clash of forces—a duel in which one was the instrument of fate, and the other predestined to destruction.
It was of less importance during the period between Andrew Bogoliubski and Ivan IV. that Mongols were exercising degrading tyranny and making desperate reprisals for defeat—that Lithuania and Poland, and conspirators everywhere, were by arms and by diplomacy and by treachery trying to ruin the state; all this was of less import than the fact that every vestige of authority was surely passing out of the hands of the nobility into those of the Tsar. The fight was a desperate one. It became open and avowed under Ivan III., still more bitter under his son Vasili II., and culminated at last under Ivan the Terrible, when, like an infuriated animal, he let loose upon them all the pent-up instincts in his blood.