Seerkon had no other crime than that he was rich. A rope was placed round his waist and he was hauled from one side of a river to the other and back again until half-drowned, then placed in a bath of hot oil and torn to pieces.
Ivan kept many bears, and delighted to turn them out when savage amongst helpless people. Another diversion was to clothe men in bear skins, then set trained dogs to tear them to pieces. He poured spirits over the heads of delegates, then set their beards on fire. On one occasion his men brought a lot of women of Moscow, and stripping all naked presented them to Ivan—he took a few and gave the remainder to the perpetrators of this outrage. Prince Chernialef he had grilled in an enormous frying-pan; hundreds died on the rack.
“Kniaz Ivan Kuraken, being found drunk, as was pretended, in Wenden when besieged, being voievod thereof, was stripped naked, laid on a cart, whipped through the market with six whips of wire, which cut his back, belly and bowels to death. Another, as I remember, Ivan Obrossimov, was hanged naked on a gibbet by the hair of his head; the skin and flesh of his body from top to toe cut off and minced with knives into small gobbets, by four palatsniks (chamberlains). The one, wearied with his long carving, thrust his knife in somewhat far the sooner to dispatch him, and was presently had to another place of execution and that hand cut off; which, not being well seared, he died the next day.
“That was the valley compared to Gehenna or Tophet, where the faithless Egyptians did sacrifice their children to the hideous devils.
“Kniaz Boris Telupa was drawn upon a sharp stake, soaped to enter his body and out at his neck, upon which he languished in horrible pain for fifteen hours and spake unto his mother, the duchess, brought to behold that woeful sight. And she, a good matronly woman, given to one hundred gunners who did her to death. Her body lying naked in the Place, Ivan commanded his huntsman to bring their hungry hounds and devour her flesh, and dragged her bones everywhere. The Tsar saying: ‘Such as I favour I have honoured, and such as be treytors will I have thus done unto.’ ”—Horsey.
Another boyard impaled, during the long hours he remained conscious, never ceased calling upon God to forgive the Tsar. On one occasion, during a time of great scarcity, Ivan caused it to be made known that at a certain hour alms would be distributed at his palace. A great crowd of needy people assembled, and seven hundred were promptly knocked on the head by the opritchniks and their bodies thrown into the lake; a death so merciful, Horsey terms it “a deed of charity.”
Ivan forced father to kill son, and son father. His two once favourites, the Gluiskis, also suffered; the son being beheaded as he reverently raised the head just struck from his father’s body. On that same day another prince was impaled and four others beheaded. Many were hung up by the feet, hacked with knives, and whilst still living, plunged into a cauldron of scalding water. On one occasion, eight hundred women were drowned together. The opritchniks, of whom at one time Ivan had seven hundred, killed scores of people daily.
He himself plotted against the life of his own son and gave “Maliuta” (Skutarov) orders to kill him. Kniaz Serebrenni saved him. This is the subject of Count A. Tolstoi’s best known novel and of an old ballad which recounts how the Tsar got all the boyards together to say a mass for the dead Tsarevich and in mourning, “or all I will boil in a cauldron.” Nikita Serebrenni, hiding the Tsarevich behind the door, enters in ordinary raiment and is questioned by the Tsar, who when he knows that the Tsarevich is safe, rejoices greatly and offers Serebrenni half the kingdom as a reward. Serebrenni answers:—
“Ah! woe Tsar Ivan Vasilievich!
I wish neither for the half of thy kingdom,
Nor the gold of thy coffers.
Give me only that wicked Skutarov,
I will guide him to the noisome marsh
That men call most cursed spot.”
With the aid of his foreign physician, Bomel, Ivan substituted poison for the knife. At his table the craven boyards would gather trembling; take from him and drain the cup they knew to be poisoned. No wonder Horsey called them “a base and servile people, without courage.” In his turn “Elizius Bomelius” suffered a cruel death. When Theodorof was accused of aspiring to the crown, Ivan dressed him in the royal insignia, seated him on the throne and did him mock homage; then struck him dead, saying that it was he who exalted the humble and put down the mighty from their seats.