THE STRUGGLE FOR LIVONIA
At length, urged by the clamour of his advisers, Ivan organised an army of three hundred thousand men; but, although he could instigate and assist at the most revolting punishments, he shrunk from a personal share in the numerous petty conflicts which took place between his forces and the Livonian knights. Instead of advancing boldly upon the enemy, who could not have maintained war against the superior numbers of the Russians, he suffered himself to be shielded by a jesuit, the pope’s envoy, whose intercession with Battori he had procured by representing, with consummate audacity, that he hoped to be able to effect the conversion of the Russians to catholicism. Whenever he fell in with the Livonians, and the collision terminated in victory, he committed the wildest excesses: plundered the captives of their wealth, which he transmitted to his own private coffers, and then sentenced the prisoners to be flung into boiling cauldrons, spitted on lances, or roasted at fires which he amused himself by stirring—while the sacrificial murders were in progress. Wars so irregularly conducted, and terminating in such frightful revenge could not but entail calamities upon the empire. All that was gained by the long struggle for Livonia, was the occasional plunder which Ivan appropriated to himself.
To support the system of profligate expenditure to which the whole life of this extraordinary man inevitably led, he laid on the most exorbitant taxes, and lent himself to the most unjust monopolies. Nor was he satisfied with exceeding in this way the most arbitrary examples that had preceded him; but, with a recklessness of human life, and a disregard of the common decencies and obligations of the worst condition of society, he proceeded to rifle his subjects of their private means, sometimes upon slight pretences, but oftener without any pretence whatever. It would almost appear that his appetite for sights of destruction had palled with ordinary gratification; and that he had jaded his invention to discover new modes of cruelty. Having exhausted in all its varieties the mere art of slaughter, he proceeded to make his objects violate before his eyes the sacred feelings of nature. He demanded fratricide and parricide at their hands: one man was forced to kill his father, another his brother: eight hundred women were drowned, and, bursting into the houses of his victims, he compelled the survivors to point out the places where the remnant of their wealth was concealed. His excesses carried him beyond all law, human and divine. He assumed the place, and even usurped the attributes of the Deity, and identified himself to a proverb with the Creator. Not content with indulging his insane passions in the frenzy of an undisciplined mind, he trampled the usages of Russia under foot, and married seven wives—which was held by the tenets of the Greek religion to be a crime of great magnitude.[g]
PROJECTS OF ALLIANCE WITH ENGLAND
[1582-1584 A.D.]
The unfortunate issue of the war with Sweden did not however make Ivan the Terrible give up the idea of compensating himself for his losses; he continued to seek for alliances with European states. With this object Theodore Pissemski was sent to England in 1582 with instructions to endeavour to bring about a close alliance with Elizabeth against his enemy the king of Poland, and at the same time to enter into matrimonial negotiations for the czar with the queen’s relative, Maria Hastings. The English would not entertain either project, but only sought to obtain an exemption from entry duties for their trade with Russia. In 1583 Jeremiah Bowes was sent to Moscow from England with the delicate mission of attaining this object. The negotiations dragged on a long time; first the czar sent away Bowes and then recalled him again, and in fact they had not come to an end before the death of Ivan the Terrible.[b]
DEATH OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE
[1584 A.D.]
We have already seen what was the life of Ivan: we shall now see its ending—which was equally astonishing—desirable indeed for mankind, but terrifying to the imagination; for the tyrant died as he had lived, that is, exterminating men, although in contemporary narratives there is no mention of his last victims.[33] Strong in bodily constitution, Ivan had hoped for a long life; but what bodily strength could withstand the furious rage of the passions that agitated the sombre existence of the tyrant? The continued outbursts of wrath and fear, the racking of the unrepentant conscience, the odious transports of abominable sensuality, the torments of shame, the impotent fury at the reverses of his arms, finally the horrible remembrance of the murder of his own son, had exhausted the measure of Ivan’s strength. At times he experienced a painful languor, the precursory symptom of dissolution, but he struggled against it and did not noticeably weaken until the winter of the year 1584. At that time a comet appeared in the sky between the churches of Ivan the Great and of the Annunciation, which had the form of a cross. Curious to see it, Ivan went out on the red staircase, gazed at it long, grew pale, and said to those around him: “there is the portent of my death.” Pursued by this idea, it is said that he caused astrologers and pretended magicians to be sought for throughout Russia and Lapland, brought together about sixty of them, assigned to them a house in Moscow, and daily sent his favourite Belski, to confer with them concerning the comet. Soon he fell dangerously ill. It is said that the astrologers predicted his death on the 18th of March. During February he was still able to occupy himself with affairs; but on the 10th of March a courier was despatched to delay the arrival of the Lithuanian ambassador who was on his way to Moscow, by reason of the illness of the czar. Ivan himself had given the order; he had still hopes of recovery, nevertheless he called together the boyars and commanded that his will and testament should be written down. He declared the czarevitch Theodore heir to the throne and monarchy, and chose well-known men for councillors to watch over the prosperity of the state and lighten for Theodore (who was feeble both in mind and body) the burden of the cares of the state; these men were: Prince Ivan Petrovitch Shuiski (the famous defender of Pskov), Ivan Mstislavski, son of a niece of the grand prince Vasili, Nikita Romanovitch Iuriev (brother of Ivan’s first wife, the virtuous Anastasia), Boris Godunov, and Belski. To the young Dmitri and his mother he assigned the town of Uglitch as appanage, the boy’s education to be exclusively confided to Belski. He declared his gratitude to all his boyars and voyevods, calling them his friends and companions in arms in the conquest of unbelieving kingdoms, in the victories gained over the knights of the Livonian order, the khan, and the sultan. He exhorted Theodore to rule piously, lovingly and mercifully, advising him and the five chief dignitaries of the state to avoid war with Christian powers. He spoke of the disastrous consequences of the wars with Lithuania and Sweden, deplored the exhaustion of Russia, enjoined a reduction of the taxes and the liberation of all captives, even of the Lithuanian and German prisoners.
The strength of the sick man presently left him; his thoughts were beclouded; stretched in unconsciousness upon his bed, Ivan called loudly for his murdered son, imagined he saw him and spoke to him tenderly. On the 17th of March he felt better from the effects of a warm bath, so that he commanded the Lithuanian ambassador to come without delay from Mozhaisk to Moscow. The next day (if Horsey is to be believed) he said to Belski, “Go and tell those liars, the astrologers, that they shall die: according to their fables I am to die now, but I feel a great deal better.” But, answered the astrologers, the day has not yet passed. A bath was again prepared for the czar in which he remained about three hours, then he lay down on his bed and rested. Soon he asked for a chessboard, and sitting up in bed in his dressing-gown, he himself set up the chessmen and wanted to play with Belski.[34] Suddenly he fell back and closed his eyes for all eternity. The doctors rubbed him with strengthening fluids, while the metropolitan—probably fulfilling the will of Ivan that had been long known to him—read the prayers for the taking of orders over the dying man, giving him the monastic names of Jonas. During these moments a deep silence reigned throughout the palace and the capital; people waited in expectancy, but nobody dared to ask. Ivan lay already dead, yet he appeared still terrible to the surrounding courtiers, who for a long time could not believe their eyes and did not announce his death. On the third day magnificent obsequies took place in the church of St. Michael.