All these princes, as well as the powerful boyars of Tver, Riazan, Novgorod, were become the boyars of the grand prince. There was for all only one court at which they could serve—that of Moscow. When Russia had been divided into sovereign states, the discontented boyars had been at liberty to change masters—to pass from the service of Tchernigov into that of Kiev, from that of Suzdal into that of Novgorod. Now, whither could they go? Outside of Moscow, there were only foreign rulers, enemies of Russia. To make use of the ancient right to change masters was to go over to the enemy—it was treason. “To change” and “to betray” were become synonymous: the Russian word izmiyanit (third person singular of “to change”) was become the word izmiyanik (“traitor”).
The Russian boyar could take refuge neither with the Germans, the Swedes, nor the Tatars; he could go only to the sovereign of Lithuania—but this was the worst possible species of change, the most pernicious form of treason. The prince of Moscow knew well that the war with Lithuania—that state which Polish in the west, by its Russian provinces, in the east exercised a dangerous attraction over subjects of Moscow—was a struggle for existence. Lithuania was not only a foreign enemy—it was a domestic enemy, with intercourse and sympathies in the very heart of the Russian state, even in the palace of the czar; her formidable hand was felt in all intrigues, in all conspiracies. The foreign war against Lithuania, the domestic war against the Russian oligarchy are but two different phases of the same war—the heaviest and most perilous of all those undertaken by the grand prince of Moscow. The dispossessed princes, the boyars of the old independent states had given up the struggle against him on the field of battle; they continued to struggle against him in his own court.
It was no longer war between state and state; it was intestine strife—that of the oligarchy against autocratic power. Resigned to the loss of their sovereignty, the new prince-boyars of Moscow were not yet resigned to their position as mere subjects. The struggle was thus limited to a narrower field, and was therefore the more desperate. The court at Moscow was a tilt-yard, whence none could emerge without a change of masters—the Lithuanian for the Muscovite—without treason: hence the furious nature of the war of two principles under Ivan IV.[e]
THE MINORITY OF IVAN IV
On the death of his father, Ivan was only three years of age. Helena, his mother, a woman unfit for the toils of government, impure in her conduct, and without judgment, assumed the office of regent, which she shared with a paramour, whose elevation to such a height caused universal disgust, particularly among the princes of the blood and the nobility. The measures which had of late years been adopted towards the boyars were not forgotten by that haughty class; and now that the infirm state of the throne gave them a fair pretext for complaint, they conspired against the regent, partly with a view to remove so unpopular and degraded a person from the imperial seat, but principally that they might take advantage of the minority of the czar, and seize upon the empire for their own ends. The circumstances in which the death of Vasili left the country were favourable to these designs. The licentiousness that prevailed at court, the absence of a strict and responsible head, and the confusion that generally took the place of the order that had previously prevailed, assisted the treacherous nobles in their treasonable projects. They had long panted for revenge and restitution, and the time seemed to be ripe for the execution of their plans.
Ivan the Terrible
(1530-1584)
Amongst the most prominent members of this patrician league, were the three paternal uncles of the young prince. They made no scruple of exhibiting their feelings; and they at last grew so clamorous, that the regent, on the ground that they entertained designs upon the throne, condemned them to loathsome dungeons, where they died in lingering torments. Their followers and abettors suffered by torture and the worst kinds of ignominious punishment. These examples spread such consternation amongst the rest of the conspirators, that they fled to Lithuania and the Crimea, where they endeavoured to inspire a sympathy in their misfortunes. But the regent, whose time appears to have been solely dedicated to the worst description of pleasures, being unable to preserve herself without despotism, succeeded in overcoming the enemies whom her own conduct was so mainly instrumental in creating.
The reign of lascivious folly and wanton rigour was not, however, destined to survive the wrath of the nobles. For five years, intestine jealousies and thickening plots plunged the country into anarchy; and, at last, the regent died suddenly, having, it is believed, fallen by poison administered through the agency of the revengeful boyars. The spectacle of one criminal executing summary justice upon another, is not destitute of some moral utility; and in this case it might have had its beneficial influence, were it not that the principal conspirators had no sooner taken off the regent than they violently seized upon the guardianship of the throne.