Jealous of each other the courtiers would not allow the princes to attach themselves to anyone. If Ivan felt drawn to anyone, or any person took notice of him, all the others combined to separate the two.
The Shooiskis were then the most powerful family, and Shooiski treated Ivan with scant consideration. His tutors encouraged him to ride at full speed through the streets and try to knock down the old and feeble; they allowed him to have animals tortured for his diversion, and laughed with him at their plight when flung from the roof of the palace. Ivan learned to read, and spelled through all the books he could obtain. From these old chronicles,—from those of the Kings of Israel, to the doings of his own ancestors—he seems to have obtained the idea of the powers of sovereignty. A close observer he noticed that although ordinarily he was treated as of little account, when any act of state had to be done he was always summoned to give the command. Young as he was, Ivan knew his importance. One day, when he was thirteen years old, he went out sporting with Gluiski, and Gluiski incited him to repress the arrogance of Shooiski. Ivan did it by having Shooiski pulled out into the street and worried to death there and then by Gluiski’s hounds.
From that time Ivan treated all with cruelty. In his eighteenth year he arrogated to himself the title of Tsar—the name by which all great rulers were designated in the old Slavonic books he had read. In the same year, 1547, he married Anastasia Romanof, and in that year the inhabitants of Moscow, tired of his cruelties, repeatedly fired the town. In April the merchants’ stores were fired, probably by robbers intent upon gain; the fire spread, destroying the stores of the Tsar, the monastery of the Epiphany, and most of the houses in the Kitai Gorod. On the 20th of the same month the streets of the artisans along the Yauza suffered, and on the 21st June, during a high wind, a fire started on the far side of the Neglinnaia, in the Arbat, and this spread to the Kremlin and destroyed there the whole of the wooden buildings. The inhabitants could save nothing, and the night was made more hideous by frequent explosions as the fire reached one powder magazine and another. The palaces, the tribunals, the treasuries, armouries, warehouses, all were destroyed. All books, deeds, pictures and ikons were lost, with few exceptions. The metropolitan, the aged Macarius, was praying in the cathedral and refused to leave; he was forcibly removed, placed in a basket and lowered from the Kremlin wall near the Tainitski gate; the rope broke, he fell to the ground, and was taken more dead than alive to the Novo Spasski Monastery. There was not time to remove the Holy ikons. The fire after destroying the roof of the cathedral burnt out, and the celebrated ikon of the Virgin of Vladimir was saved.
The ruins smouldered for a week. Seventeen hundred perished in the flames. The Tsar withdrew to the Sparrow Hills so as not to see the distress of the people. The survivors, their beards burnt, their faces blackened, fought among the embers for the vestiges of what had been theirs. Church and court alike forsook the spot.
An earnest priest, Sylvester, forced himself upon the terrified Tsar, upbraided him for his excesses, and exhorted him to lead a better life. Ivan, always an arrant coward, now completely unnerved, at once came under the influence of the priest. He took as his counsellor one Adashef, a man of good repute and some wisdom. For thirteen years he and Sylvester administered the law and dictated the policy of the country. In Anastasia they had an able assistant and firm friend. Their first act was directed towards limiting the power of the Tsar; at their behest he called together an assembly of the people to advise him. They compiled a code of laws, the Sudebnik, and the Stoglaf, this last the decrees of the council (Zemstvo) held at Moscow in 1551 and shortly afterwards Sylvester issued his “Domostroi”—household law, teaching how to live as Godfearing men and prove good husbandmen. The Tsar, earnest in his new rôle, paid great attention to his spiritual advisers. When twenty-one he exhorted them to “Thunder in mine ears the voice of God that my soul may live.”
In 1552 he was persuaded to lead an expedition against the Tartars of Kazan. The army was strong and well equipped. With wonderful foresight, a neighbouring town had been well stocked with provisions and was used as a base for the besiegers. After a stubborn resistance Ivan’s army of 150,000 took the town, and slaughtered the defenders. On this occasion Ivan is said to have displayed considerable courage, and when he saw the bodies of the slain Tartars, to have regretted their death, saying, “for though of another faith they are human beings even as ourselves.”
Too soon he returned to Moscow, and the newly-conquered province rebelled. Ivan then was very ill, “a fever so great all thought him at the point of death.” Ivan thought his last hour was at hand and summoned the nobles to take the oath of fealty to his son Dmitri, whom he nominated his successor. Some refused, others hesitated: Zakharin-Yurief alone, was earnest and ready in his allegiance. He was a near kinsman of the Tsarina and so, more than any, was interested in the welfare of Dmitri. Others intrigued for the succession. The Tsar lying helpless on his couch heard the boyards and counsellors discussing their plans in the adjoining apartment. Even Sylvester and his trusted counsellor Alexis Adashef, favoured the succession of Vladimir, Ivan’s cousin.
Ivan recovered, but for a time he acted as though he had forgotten what he overheard on his sick bed. He never forgave. His wife, Anastasia, also withdrew her friendship from those who had opposed her son’s succession.
Then Ivan made a visit to the monastery at Bielo Ozersk—the White Lake—and there he saw the aged Vassian, the old counsellor of his father, who gave him advice contrary to that so earnestly and frequently dinned into his ears by Sylvester and Adashef. “If you wish to become absolute monarch,” said Vassian, “seek no counsellor wiser than yourself. Never take advice from any: instead, give it. Command, never obey. Then will you become a sovereign in all truth.”
This advice pleased Ivan. “My father himself,” he answered, “could not have given wiser counsel.”