1508 The Russian army is defeated by the revolted people of Kazan. The victors unite with the Tatars of the Crimea, invade Russia and carry their ravages up to the gates of Moscow. Vasili pays a large ransom for the safety of his capital, and signs a treaty by which he engages to become tributary to the khan. Thirty thousand prisoners are carried off by the invaders, and sold at Kaffa to the Turks.
1510 Pskov, last Slavonic republic, annexed.
1514 Smolensk is taken from the Lithuanians after being held by them for 110 years. But in the same year the Lithuanians defeat the Russian force at Orsha, on left bank of the Dnieper. Thirty thousand Russians are said to have fallen in battle.
1521 Riazan and Novgorod-Seversk, the last independent principalities, are annexed. Crimean Tatars devastate the country.
1523 A second expedition against Kazan, consisting of 150,000 men, fails of its object; one of its two divisions is almost annihilated.
1530 Third expedition against Kazan. The city is surprised by night and 60,000 inhabitants are massacred. But the Russian commander, bribed, it is said, by the remaining Kazanians, enters into a treaty of peace with them.
1533 Vasili dies. Regency of his wife, Helena Glinska, 1533-37. Supremacy of the Shuiski, 1537-43. Ivan is under the influence of the Glinski till 1547, when they were torn in pieces by the infuriated Moscow populace. Such was the youth of Ivan the Terrible.
1547 Ivan is crowned and takes the title of Czar.
1550 The Sudebnik of his grandfather Ivan III is revised.
1551 The Stoglav, or Book of the Hundred Chapters, by which the affairs of the church were regulated, is issued.