“The next victim was the treasurer, Funikov-Kartsef, a friend of Viskovati, accused with him of the same treason, and as unjustly. He in his turn said to Ivan, ‘I pray God will give thee in eternity a fitting reward for thy actions here!’ He was drenched with boiling and cold water alternately, until he expired after enduring the most horrible torments. Then others were hanged, strangled, tortured, cut to pieces, killed slowly, quickly, by whatever means fancy suggested. Ivan himself took a part, stabbing and slaying without dismounting from his horse. In four hours two hundred had been put to death, and then, the carnage over, the hangmen, their clothes covered with blood, and their gory, steaming knives in their hands, surrounded the Tsar and shouted huzzah. ‘Goida! Goida! Long live the Tsar! Ivan for ever! Goida! Goida!’ And so shouting they went round the market-place that Ivan might examine the mutilated remains, the piled-up corpses, the actual evidences of the slaughter. Enough of bloodshed for the one day? Not a bit of it. Ivan, satiated for the moment with the slaughter, would gloat over the grief of the survivors. Wishing to see the unhappy wives of Funikov-Kartsef and of Viskovati, he forced a way into their apartments and made merry over their grief! The wife of Funikov-Kartsef he put to the torture, that he might have from her whatever treasures she possessed. Equally he wished to torture her fifteen-year-old daughter, who was groaning and lamenting at their ill fortune, but contented himself with handing her over to the by no means tender mercies of the Tsarevich Ivan. Taken afterwards to a convent, these unhappy beings shortly died of grief—it is said.”—Karamzin.
Sometimes Ivan’s vagaries were less gruesome, possessing even a comic aspect:—
One day he requisitioned of his secretary 200,000 men at arms by such a day and signed the order “Johnny of Moscow.” He carried a staff with a very sharp spike in the end, which, in discourse he would strike through his boyard’s feet, and if they could bear it without flinching, he would favour them. He once sent to Vologda for a pot of fleas and because the town could not send the measure full, he fined the inhabitants 7000 roubles.
“He once went in disguise into a village and sought shelter. The only man who would offer it was the one worst off, and at the time sore beset. Ivan promised to return, and did so with a great company and many presents, acting also as godson to the man’s child, whose birth he had witnessed. Then his followers burned all the other dwellings in the village to teach the owners charity and try how good it was to lie out of doors in winter.”
“When Ivan went on his tours he was met by the householders and presented with the best they had. A poor shoemaker knowing not what to give, except a pair of sandals, was reminded that a large turnip in his garden was a rarity, and so presented that to Ivan, who took the present so kindly that he commanded a hundred of his followers to buy sandals of the man at a crown a pair. A boyard seeing him so well paid, made account by the rule of proportion to get a much greater reward by presenting Ivan with a fine horse, but Ivan, suspecting his intention, rewarded him with the turnip the bootmaker had given.”
On a certain festival he played mad pranks, which caused some Dutch and English women to laugh, and he, noticing this, sent all to the palace, where he had them stripped stark naked before him in a great room and then he commanded four or five bushels of pease to be thrown on the floor and made them pick all up one by one, and, when they had done, gave them wine and bade them heed how they laughed before an emperor again. He sent for a nobleman of Kasan, who was called Plesheare, which is “Bald,” and the Vayvod mistaking the word, thought he sent for a hundred bald pates and therefore got together as many as he could, about eighty or ninety, and sent them up speedily with an excuse that he could find no more in his province and asking pardon. The emperor seeing so many, crossed himself, and finding out how the mistake occurred, made the baldpates drunk for three days then sent them home again.—Collins.
“He it was who nailed a French ambassador’s hat to his head. Sir Jeremy Bowes, the English ambassador, soon after came before Ivan, put on his hat, and cocked it before him, at which Ivan sternly demanded how he durst do so, having heard how he chastised the French ambassador. Sir Jeremy answered, ‘I am the ambassador of the invincible Queen of England, who does not veil her bonnet, nor bare her head to any prince living. If any of her ministers shall receive any affront abroad, she is able to avenge her own quarrel.’
“ ‘Look you at that!’ cried Ivan to his boyards, ‘Which of you would do so much for me, your master?’ ”
He was probably not acting nor scoffing when he acted the part of abbot, and made his companions friars of the house at Alexandrovski—to which he retreated for upwards of a year at a time when he mistrusted the people of Moscow and feared for his life and his throne. Ivan regularly summoned to mass this strange company, all clad like brothers of a monastery, and himself officiated. His prostrations were no sham, for his forehead bore the marks of its severe knockings on the floor, but in the middle of a mass he would pause to give some order for the murder of his victims, or the pillage of the rich. The mornings were spent in religious exercise—the rest of the day and much of the night in the foulest orgies and the perpetration of fearful outrages in the dungeons and torture chambers of his residence.
At all times the boyards durst do nothing without him, and waited upon him duteously wherever he might go. His voievodes kept the newly-conquered provinces in subjection; others carried the war into the country of his enemies and brought fresh lands under his dominion. Yermak, an outlaw, conquered Siberia and made of it a gift to the Tsar. Anthony Jenkinson, on behalf of the English Russia Company, conveyed their goods from Archangel to Astrakhan; there fitted out a fleet for trading on the shores of the Caspian, and made a successful war on the Shah of Persia.