The Story of Moscow

by Wirt Gerrare

This was gratifying to Ivan. He consented to govern again if the Church would not exercise its prerogative of mercy, and would leave him to do his will. His return was followed by murders and outrages worse than before. Randolph, who in 1568, was in Muscovy on an embassy from England, with which country Ivan wished to be on the best of terms, was not allowed to enter Moscow, because, Count Yuri Tolstoi thinks, Ivan wished to keep from him the knowledge of these massacres. Randolph wrote to Cecil:—

“Of the Tsar’s condition I have learned that of late he hath beheaded no small number of his nobility, causing their heads to be laid on the streets, to see who durst behold them or lament their deaths. The Chancellor he caused to be executed openly, leaving neither wife, children, nor brother alive. Divers others have been cut to pieces by his command.”

During the third cycle of Ivan’s outrages, Philip, the metropolitan, in 1568, dared to upbraid the Tsar. Ivan with a crowd of his irreligious followers, disguised in the cloaks they wore when sallying forth to rapine and outrage, repaired to the Uspenski Sobor for a blessing before starting on their fearful work. The metropolitan refused to recognise Ivan so clad when called upon for his benediction.

“What is the thing thou hast done then, O Tsar, that thou shouldst put off from thee the form of thine honour? Fear the judgment of God, to whom we are here making a pure sacrifice. Behind the altar the innocent blood of Christian men is made to flow by thee! Among pagans, in the country of the infidel, are laws, and justice, and compassion shown to men, but in Russia now is nothing of this kind. The lives and goods of citizens are without defence. Everywhere pillage, on all sides murder, and each and all these crimes are committed in the name of the Tsar. There is a judge on high—how shall you present yourself before that Tribunal? Dare you appear there covered with the blood of innocents, deaf to their cries of pain? Even the very stones beneath your feet cry aloud to heaven for vengeance on such black deeds as are done here. O Prince, I speak to thee as the shepherd, fearing none but the Lord our God.”

Ivan enraged, stuck his staff into the ground, and swore to be as bad as Philip described him. Vasili Pronski was the first to suffer in the murders that followed closely upon this scene, but Ivan did not forget Philip. One of the soldiers was ordered to present himself before the metropolitan and wear the Tartar skull cap; the metropolitan noticed this irreverence, and turned to the leader for a command that the man should uncover. In the meantime the man did so, and Philip was accused of lying. The boyard, Alexis Basmanov, with a troop of armed men and having the Tsar’s fiat in his hand, arrested Philip whilst officiating at High Mass in the Uspenski Sobor, and read out that by the decree of the clergy, Philip was deposed from his high office. The people were surprised and stupefied. The soldiers seized Philip, tore his vestments from him, and chased him from the church with besoms. He was first taken to the monastery of the Epiphany, next to an obscure prison where he was loaded with irons. Whilst there, the head of his well-beloved nephew, Ivan Borisovich, was thrown to him. A crowd gathered near the prisoner’s cell, and the people spake with each other of his goodness. It frightened Ivan, and he had Philip removed to the monastery at Tver, where he was subsequently strangled by Skutarov on the Tsar’s journey through the town on the way to Novgorod.

As a condition for his consent to reside in Moscow, Ivan stipulated for a bodyguard of his own choosing. These men, the öpritchniki, that is, “picked” fellows, became the terror of Moscow. Selected for their readiness to obey, their bodily strength and lack of morals, they recognised no master but Ivan, and by him were privileged to rob and slay the people as they wished, providing they were at hand to kill anyone in particular whom he might want out of the way. They carried bludgeons with heads carved to represent those of dogs, at the saddle bow, and a small besom at the other end, the “speaking symbols” of their intention to hunt down rebels and sweep Russia clean.

By their callousness and brutality they, on many occasions, distinguished themselves in a manner that gladdened Ivan, but at no time did their excesses excel their performance on the march to Novgorod. Ivan, very suspicious of treason, doubted the fidelity of Novgorod, a town with known predilections for freedom, and inclined to favour the more enlightened rule of the western kings than the Russian autocrat. A hired traitor placed a forged letter behind an image in Novgorod Church, and disclosed the plot to Ivan, whose agents found the compromising letter, which contained overtures to the Lithuanians; Ivan started to subdue the town. The öpritchniks preceded him. Klin, a thriving town near Moscow, was sacked; the inhabitants of Tver were spoiled, and many murdered. On their way the advance guard killed all whom they met, lest any should know where the Tsar was. Villages and towns were annihilated. Monks had to find twenty roubles each as ransom; those who could not were thrashed from morning until night, then, when Ivan arrived on the scene, were flogged to death.

On his arrival at Novgorod he was entertained by the people; during the banquet served to him and his followers he gave a loud cry—the signal for his fellows to begin the slaughter. The Tsar and his son went to an enclosure specially reserved for the torture of their victims, and with their lances prodded those who were not quickly enough dragged to the place of torment. Chroniclers say that from 500 to 1000 were slain in cold blood before him each day of his stay. Some were burned, some racked to death, others drowned in the Volkhof, run in on sledges or thrown in from the bridge—soldiers in boats spearing those who swam. Infants were empaled before the eyes of their mothers, husbands butchered along with their wives. Novgorod, at that time larger and of greater commercial importance than Moscow, was so injured that she has never since acquired the rank of even a third-rate town. On leaving it, Ivan called together a few starving survivors, and commanded them to obey the laws and fear him. He went on to Pskov, where the town was saved by the boldness of a half-witted hermit, who offered Ivan raw meat on a fast-day, and threatened him that he would be struck by lightning if any citizen of Pskov was injured whilst Ivan remained in the town. An accident to his horse seemed to Ivan an earnest of the “Holy-man’s” power, and he left the town precipitately.

According to Horsey, Ivan at this time had a Tartar army with him, and tried to reduce other towns in Livonia. At Reval, men and women carried water by night to repair the breaches in the walls made by his cannon during the day, and Ivan, losing six thousand men, in the end had to retreat in shame. Losing more men before Narva, he put in execution there “the most bloody and cruellest massacre that ever was heard of in any age,” giving the spoil of the town to his Tartars. Following the custom of his country, the prisoners of war were all brought as slaves to Moscow, many dying on the way, some, including Scotch and English soldiers of fortune in the pay of the Swedes, thrown into prison in Moscow and there subsequently tortured and executed.