The foremost persons in this drama were the Shuiski—a family that had long been treated with suspicion by the czars, their insolent bearing having always exposed them to distrust. Prince Shuiski was appointed president of the council of the boyars, to whom the administration of affairs was confided, and although his malignant purposes were kept in check by the crowd of equally ambitious persons that surrounded him, he possessed sufficient opportunities to consummate a variety of wrongs upon the resources of the state and upon obnoxious individuals—thus revenging himself indiscriminately for the ancient injuries his race had suffered. During this iniquitous rule, which exhibited the extraordinary features of a government composed of persons with different interests, pressing forward to the same end, and making a common prey of the trust that was reposed in their hands, Russia was despoiled in every quarter. The Tatars, freed for a season from the watchful vigilance of the throne, roamed at large through the provinces, pillaging and slaying wherever they went; and this enormous guilt was crowned by the rapacious exactions and sanguinary proscriptions of the council. The young Ivan was subjected to the most brutal insults: his education was designedly neglected; he was kept in total ignorance of public affairs, that he might be rendered unqualified to assume the hereditary power; and Prince Shuiski, in the midst of these base intrigues against the future czar, was often seen to treat him in a contemptuous and degrading manner, on one occasion he stretched forth his legs, and pressed the weight of his feet on the body of the boy. Perhaps these unexampled provocations, and the privations to which he was condemned, produced the germs of a character which was afterwards developed in such terrible magnificence, the fiend that lived in the heart of Ivan might not have been born with him; it was probably generated by the cruelties and wrongs that were practised on his youth.
In vain the Belski, moderate and wise, and the primate, influenced by the purest motives, remonstrated against the ruinous proceedings of the council. The voice of admonition was lost in the hideous orgies of the boyars, until a sudden invasion by the Tatars awakened them to a sense of their peril. They rallied, order was restored, and Russia was preserved. But the danger was no sooner over than the Shuiski returned in all their former strength, seized upon Moscow in the dead of the night, penetrated to the couch of Ivan, and, dragging him out of his sleep, endeavoured to destroy his intellect by filling him with sudden terror. The primate, whose mild representations had displeased them, was ill-treated and deposed: and the prince Belski, who could not be prevailed upon to link his fortunes with their desperate courses, was murdered in the height of their frenzy. Even those members of their own body who, touched by some intermittent pity, ventured to expostulate, were beaten in the chamber of their deliberations, and cast out from amongst them.
Under such unpropitious auspices as these, the young Ivan, the inheritor of a consolidated empire, grew up to manhood. His disposition, naturally fierce, headstrong, and vindictive, was most insidiously cultivated into ferocity by the artful counsellors that surrounded him. His earliest amusements were the torture of wild animals, the ignoble feat of riding over old men and women, flinging stones from ambuscades upon the passers-by, and precipitating dogs and cats from the summit of his palace. Such entertainments as these, the sport of boyhood, gave unfortunately too correct a prognostic of the fatal career that lay before him. By a curious retribution, the first exercise of this terrible temper in its application to humanity fell upon the Shuiski, who certainly, of all mankind, best merited its infliction. When Ivan was in his thirteenth year, he accompanied a hunting party at which Prince Gluiski—another factious lord—and the president of the council were present. Gluiski, himself a violent and remorseless man, envied the ascendency of Shuiski, and prompted the young prince to address him in words of great heat and insult. Shuiski, astonished at the youth’s boldness, replied in anger. This was sufficient provocation. Ivan gave way to his rage, and, on a concerted signal, Shuiski was dragged out into the public streets, and worried alive by dogs in the open daylight. The wretch expiated a life of guilt by the most horrible agonies.
Thus freed from one tyranny, Ivan was destined for another, which, however, accepted him as its nominal head, urging him onward to acts of blood which were but too congenial to his taste. The Gluiski having got rid of their formidable competitor in the race of crime, now assumed the direction of affairs. Under their administration, the prince was led to the commission of the most extravagant atrocities; and the doctrine was inculcated upon his mind, that the only way to assert authority was by manifesting the extremity of its wrath. He was taught to believe that power consisted in oppression. They applauded each fresh instance of vengeance; and initiated him into a short method of relieving himself from every person who troubled or offended him, by sacrificing the victim on the spot.
IVAN ASSUMES THE REINS OF GOVERNMENT
This terrible system continued for three years. The pupilage of the prince was an uninterrupted scene of horror; and he was crowned czar of all the Russias in his eighteenth year, after a minority of blood. The citizens, unsafe and trembling under a despotism which was so capricious in its enormities, were at length driven to desperation. They fired the city in several places one night, and Ivan awoke the next morning amidst flame and smoke, the tossing of brands, and the imprecations of the multitude. He had been accustomed to terrors, but this conflagration smote him to the heart. In the midst of the confusion, Sylvester, a monk belonging to that roving order of persons who then wandered through the country affecting to be inspired with a divine mission, suddenly appeared in the presence of the affrighted despot. With a Gospel in one hand, while the other was raised in an attitude of prophecy, he pointed to the ruins that surrounded him, and invoking the attention of the prince to the consequences of his infatuation, he dwelt upon certain appearances from heaven which prognosticated evil to the dynasty if these courses were not abandoned; and, working powerfully upon a mind already agonised with fear, he finally succeeded in gaining a complete ascendency over the czar. The effect was sudden and extraordinary. The virtuous Alexis Adaschev aided Sylvester in his efforts to reclaim Ivan; and these, assisted by the gentle persuasions of the beautiful Anastasia, Ivan’s young consort whom he had but recently married, appeared to produce a strong impression upon his feelings.
The result was an entire change in the system of government. Able and upright men displaced the corrupt and audacious counsellors who had hitherto filled the empire with alarm; a new organisation of the army took place; a just assessment of the fiefs, the various services, and contingents, was established; proprietors of estates were obliged to contribute to the maintenance of the military strength according to their means; and by a bonus in the pay of the soldiery, which was now adopted, the available force of the country was raised to the number of three hundred thousand men. Thus strengthened, with prudent ministers and a powerful army, Ivan set himself to the worthy task of subduing the rebellious Tatars. His ardour even appears to have carried him into extremes, for in the depth of winter he marched at the head of the soldiery to the siege of Kazan, although his followers did not hesitate to declare that no good commander would think of conducting his troops in so rigorous a season into the quarters of the enemy. But such ebullitions of discontent were punished with so much severity, that the troops soon learned to be content with the severities which procured such victories as Ivan was fortunate enough to gain. The first measure of great utility which he accomplished, was the erection of forts on the frontier to repel the aggressions of the enemy; but apprehending that even these were not sufficient to deter the marauders, he advanced upon Kazan, and captured it by springing a mine—a process in the art of war which was quite novel to the Russians, and filled them with astonishment and admiration. Having taken the city, he turned the mosques of the Tatars into Christian temples, and caused the khan to be baptised; which proofs of his religious zeal were admirably calculated to ingratiate him in the regards of the people.
In one of those ecstatic moods which sometimes assail the better judgment of the old chroniclers, the Russian historian informs us that Ivan, upon entering Kazan, wept at the sight of the dead bodies with which the streets were strewn. We certainly cannot put in any evidence in disproof of this apocryphal assertion, but the picture of Nero fiddling while Rome was burning is even more probable.
In addition to his successes at Kazan, Ivan was triumphant in the kingdom of Astrakhan, which he afterwards annexed to the Russian empire. This acquisition was very valuable, as in that district the vine, and other rich productions of the soil, grew in remarkable luxuriance. Fortune seemed on all hands to favour the interval of grace that visited the czar. While he was pursuing his course of victory in other places, eighty thousand Turks, who had been despatched by Selim II against Astrakhan, perished in the desolate steppes by which it was surrounded. The wars were thus terminated in glorious and important achievements, which laid the foundations of that expanded commerce which afterwards rendered illustrious the era of one of the greatest monarchs the world ever produced.