The Story of Moscow

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The Story of MOSCOW
by Wirt Gerrare Illustr-
rated by Helen M. James

London: J. M. Dent & Co.
Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street
Covent Garden W.C.

1900

PREFACE

READERS of the modern histories of Russia may wonder by what right Moscow is included among MEDIÆVAL TOWNS, for it is the fashion of recent writers to ignore the history of the mighty Euro-Asian empire prior to the eighteenth century and the reign of Peter the Great. It is at that period this story of the old Muscovite capital ends. To many, then, this account of the town and its vicissitudes during the preceding five centuries may have the charm of novelty; perchance to others, who have wrongly concluded that the old buildings were all destroyed during Napoleon’s invasion, the few typical antiquities chosen for illustration out of many like, will attract to a closer acquaintance with memorials of a past that was but little influenced by the art of the west.

Moscow, where the east merges with the west but remains distinct and unconquered, has a fascination all its own; the town not only has been great, but is so yet; its influence pervades the Russian empire and is still mutable and active; its story therefore comprises more than the legends and associations of an ordinary city, but, if confined merely to an enumeration of the facts and traditions of the past will not be void of interest, and however fully given, must fall far short of what the imaginative reader may reasonably expect. Of the meagre character of this present account I am fully aware; of its positive errors I am, at present, unhappily ignorant, but I trust that those who discover mistakes will not only forgive, but notify me of them, that later readers may be as grateful for the favour as I myself shall be. Of place names I have given the idiomatic, instead of the usual literal translation; where I have attempted an equivalent reproduction of the original the transliteration will be comprehensible to those who know nothing of either French or German. That I may not be charged with inconsistency in this, I may explain that where a foreign spelling—as rouble—has become familiar I have used the Anglicism. To most readers the names will, I fear, be unpronounceable however spelled; but only the expert will regret that I have not given the original Russian. To them the excuse I offer is, that to everyone ignorant of the tongue Russian names are absolutely undecipherable, being apparently composed of an alphabet in spasms made up into words of poly-syllabic length.

It is difficult for one not of the Eastern Church to write justly of Russian Ecclesiasticism; an alien, however carefully he may observe, is liable to obtain faulty impressions and make erroneous deductions; so to me any criticism seems an impertinence. I have tried to present its artistic phases fairly, but am conscious that the ninth chapter is the least satisfactory of all that I have written.

For the rest, my task has been easy: I have had but to examine, compare, and judge the work of others and from their stored treasures make my selection. I have produced little that is really original: others have delved amid ruins for vestiges of the earlier Moscow; have unearthed ancient monuments; transcribed illegible manuscripts; ransacked archives, measured walls, calculated heights, weighed bells and counted steps; formed theories and found evidence to support them; so have rendered my labour light and pleasant. I regret that I, who at best am but an intelligible interpreter, cannot acknowledge more particularly the hundred and more authorities from whom I have drawn; in the same inadequate, general fashion I must thank many friends, English and Russian, for the kindly interest they have taken in the work and the intelligent assistance they have rendered me in its compilation. For direction to valuable sources of information, and other services, I am conscious of particular indebtedness to the Rev. F. Wyberg, of the English Church, Moscow, and to Mr V. E. Marsden, the correspondent of the Standard there—either of whom might have written a much better book about the town they know so well. The object of this volume I shall consider to be achieved if its perusal gives to anyone pleasure equal to that its compilation has brought me; or awakens even a few readers to a greater interest in Moscow, and a better understanding of the Russian people.

WIRT GERRARE.

Ты, какъ мученикъ, горѣла,
Бѣлокаменная!
И рѣка въ тебѣ кипѣла,
Бурнопламенная!
И подъ пепломъ ты лежала,
Полоненною!
И изъ пепла ты возстала,
Неизмѣнною!

Процвѣтай же славой вѣчной,
Город храмовъ и палатъ!
Градъ срединный, градъ сердечный,
Коренной Россіи градъ!
Ѳ. ГЛИНКА

White-walled and golden-headed,
Beautiful, bizarre,
The pride of all the millions
Ruled by the Russian Tsar:
The cradle of an Empire,
Shrine of a great race,
With Europe’s noblest cities
Moscow holds its place!
V. E. M.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Moscow

CHAPTER I
Introduction—Pre-Muscovite Russia

“Cimmerii a Scythis nomadibus ejecti.”—Herodotus.

THE mediæval pilgrim to Moscow, getting his first glimpse of the Holy City from Salutation Hill, saw before him much the same sight as the tourist of to-day may look upon from the same spot. Three miles away a hill crowned with white-walled buildings, many towers, gilded domes and spires topped with Cross-and-Crescent; outside the wall that encircles this hill, groups of buildings, large and small; open fields, trees—singly, in rows, clumps and thickets—separate group from group; ever and anon above the many hued roofs reach belfries, spires, steeples, domes and minarets innumerable. Beyond, to right and left, the scene repeats itself until the bright coloured buildings become indistinguishable from the masses of verdure and all merge in the haze of the plains east and west, or the faint outline of forest to the north.

Long ago the tremendous extent of this town, apparently without limit, amazed strangers no less than the richness and multitude of its buildings filled pilgrims with awe and reverence. To the tourist to-day it is as a vision of magnificent splendour and brilliance, for seen in the clear sunlight of a summer day Moscow has beauty and brightness no other city possesses. Long lines of ivory whiteness capped with vivid green or flushed with carmine and ruby; great globes of deepest blue, patches of purple and dashes of aquamarine; many gleaming domes of gold, glowing halos of burnished copper, dazzling points of glistening silver—such make Moscow at sunset like part of a rainbow streaked with lightning and thickly bedizened with great gems.

Intense colours, sharp contrasts characterise Moscow. The extravagances of design and colouring, unconcealable even in the general prospect, are obvious on closer inspection. The stranger arriving by railway gets no bird’s-eye view of the town; but on his way from the station in the suburbs towards the central town sees the painted roofs, coloured walls, pretentious pillars, cupolas with golden stars, strange towers, fantastic gates, immense buildings, tiny cottages, magnificent spaces, narrow winding streets; irregularities and incongruities so many that Moscow first, and most lastingly, impresses by its bizarrerie.

With fuller acquaintance the diversity of style appears in keeping with the spirit of the place, and seeming incongruities are softened, or redeemed, by originality of design or execution. The buildings of Moscow are multiform, but there is dissimilarity rather than contrariety; the usual elsewhere is the unconventional here, and conformity is attained by each being unlike all others. An early traveller wrote: “One might imagine all the states of Europe and Asia had sent a building by way of representation to Moscow,” and in a certain sense this is still true. But it would be incorrect to assume, therefore, that cosmopolitanism is a dominant trait. The very reverse is the fact. Moscow is essentially Russian, and though there is abundant evidence of borrowing from Greece, Italy and Byzantium; from Moor, Goth and Mongol; of appropriation of classic, mediæval and renaissance methods, the prevalent style seems to be not exactly the combination of any so much as the outcome of all. Not that indigenous forms are wanting, but their elemental quality is obscured by the wondrous versatility and adaptability of the artists. The result is as confusing as though an author in writing out his original ideas made constant random use of different alphabets in each word.

This method, so characteristic of Russia, is perplexing rather than intricate, but he would be very learned or foolhardy who, acting on the rule that to see the house is to know the inmates, if shown Moscow should at once predicate the character of its inhabitants.

Yet more than most towns Moscow reflects the life history of its people; whatever there is of beauty, of strength, of individuality, is the result of human intelligence, experience and effort. No town of like importance owes so little to nature, so much to man. And the dominant tone is religious; religious feeling has inspired the noblest efforts, ecclesiastical influence has conserved such oneness of purpose as Moscow manifests. Withal there is strong individualism, both clerical and secular.

Paradoxical as Moscow is, it is in the highest degree interesting. If no one object can be pointed to as typical of race or period, no public work shown as the result of persistent policy or genius of peculiar citizenship, Moscow in its entirety demonstrates the development of a people. Even the opposing principles of diffusion and cohesion, and the parts they have served in the history of this race, are so unmistakably expressed that the sight-seer, even, feels that in Moscow, most surely, must be found the key not only to the history of Russia, but also to the character of men who have conquered and hold the largest part of two continents.

Moscow, the town that has cradled and nursed a mighty nation, does not lack story; but its story comprises much of the early history of the empire subsequently evolved, and consequently much that may be considered foreign to the city itself must be stated if the tale is to be complete, or even comprehensible by those to whom the ancient history of Russia is unknown.

To begin at the beginning. European Russia is an immense plain, its centre elevated scarcely three hundred feet above sea-level; the hills, few, low and unimportant. Lakes are plentiful, and great rivers with many ramifications flow slowly by tortuous channels—mostly towards the north-west or the south-east. Large tracts of forest and marsh in the centre terminate with frozen wastes to the north, and merge with rough, sandy pastures on the south.

At various periods, Europe has been invaded and peopled by different races from the east, and the last of these migrants, the Slavs, for the most part took the direction of the great water-ways of Russia, that is, from the south-east towards the north-west. In addition to their nomadic habit, various causes, amongst which must be counted internecine warfare, led to the dispersion of the Slavs, whilst effective occupation by earlier migrants and the determined resistance of aboriginal races checked their progress in some directions. The Scythian branch of the Slav race settled on the Don about 400 B.C. but was gradually driven from the shores of the Black Sea by the Greek colonists of Miletus. These colonies were taken by the Romans later, and about 300 A.D. the Slavs again asserted their dominion there for a period. Other branches of the Slav race and wilder races from Asia pressed westward, laying the country waste. Huns, Turks, Goths, Bolgars, Magyars, Polovtsi, Pechenegians and others, at different times, drove Slavs of pastoral habit aside from their path. In the fifth century Slavs established themselves on the Dnieper at Kief and at Novgorod on the Ilmen, where they progressed and became civilised. In the seventh century they were once more on the shores of the Black Sea in the south, and in the north Novgorod was a thriving commercial centre.

The Slav republics suffered at the hands of Asiatics on the south, and from the depredations of vikings on the north; moreover there were internal dissensions. In A.D. 864, Rurik, a Varœger prince—the same who, it is believed, laid waste the maritime provinces of France in 850 and in 851 entered the Thames with 300 sail and pillaged Canterbury—made himself master of the northern republic, took up his residence at Novgorod and founded a dynasty which lasted 700 years. There is a legend to the effect that his coming was at the invitation of the Slavs, who sought his aid and sovereignty, but there can be no doubt it was as a conqueror that Rurik came and established his race in Russia. Some of his followers, led by Askold and Dyr, sought fortune and conquest further south. These became masters of Kief, pressed on to Constantinople in 200 ships, embraced Christianity and returned to Kief, intending there to found a separate kingdom and dynasty. After the death of Rurik, his son Igor, a minor, succeeded; his uncle, Oleg, as regent, went to Kief; there he treacherously killed the two usurping leaders, took possession of the city and, appointing Igor to the throne, determined that Kief should be the “mother of Russian towns.” The people were then pagans, and the Northmen kept to the practices of their ancestors until about 955, when Olga was regent; she visited Constantinople and was there baptised into the Christian faith. Some thirty years later, Vladimir, the seventh in descent from Rurik, ascended the throne, and during his reign the Christian religion was generally adopted throughout his realm. Kief then became closely associated with Constantinople, its connection with the Byzantine empire being both ecclesiastical and commercial. Novgorod, on the other hand, remained in closer touch with the west, supplying the Northmen with the wares of Araby and Ind that reached Russia by way of the Volga. Otther, the Scandinavian founder of Tver, where the Tmak joins the Volga north of Moscow, was a great trader and traveller; at one time going as far east as Perm on the Kama (Biarmaland), at another to England—where he gave King Alfred particulars of the fairs in the east, and the methods of trading with Asian merchants.

In the Historical Museum of Moscow is a well arranged collection of prehistoric antiquities found in the empire. There is nothing among the stone implements to show that the earliest races in Russia in any way differed in habit from those of the same era occupying western Europe and the British Isles. The most ancient of the relics (Rooms I., II.) were found with bones of the mammoth in the district of Murom in Vladimir, and at Kostenki near Voronesh. Some ear-rings and a bracelet of twisted silver were found in the Kremlin, and a few other early remains when excavating for the foundations of the new cathedral, but these trifles are not evidence of early occupation, since they may have been left by travellers along the waterways.

The frescoes are fanciful representations of supposed incidents in the life of the early inhabitants, and the models of tumuli, tombs, dolmens, cromlechs and the like, enable one to picture some part of the rude life of the people. Particularly deserving notice are the models of the dwellings of different races found in Russia: in many the living room is raised well above the ground. It was on the first-floor that the mediæval Muscovites lived; it is still the bel-étage, and preferred by all.

The picture by Semiradski representing the funeral rites of the Bolgars has the warrant of history. On the death of a chief of this tribe, the remains were placed in a boat on a pile of wood; horses, cattle, slaves, were slain and added; the wife, or a maid offering herself a sacrifice, was fêted for a time, then placed in the boat, and as soon as her attendants bade her farewell the pyre was fired, and subsequently a mound raised over the ashes.

The stone idols, remarkable in their likeness to each other, are from all parts of Russia; a similar one is to be seen at Kuntsevo, near Moscow, but both the “babas,” as they are called, and pre-christian crosses, are more common in the south and east of Russia than in Muscovy.

To the little that this Historical Collection tells of the early Slavs may be added such facts as ancient chroniclers have recorded. The Russians lived together in communities governed by elected or hereditary elders; reared cattle and farmed bees; they were nomadic, idolatrous, hospitable and fond of fermented liquors.

Some writers dispute, disregard, or belittle the Varangian dominion in Russia; contending that the Varœgers themselves were Slavs, were closely akin to them, or were quickly absorbed by them. To the contrary it is urged that Rurik and his followers possessed qualities peculiar to the Northmen; that his kingdom in Russia resembled other Scandinavian colonies, and that certain customs he introduced were foreign to Slav habits. Vladimir, a direct descendant of Rurik, conquered Poland; his son, Yaroslaf, both on account of his warlike achievements and the splendour in which he lived, was respected throughout Europe. His daughters married into the reigning houses of France, Hungary and Norway; a daughter of Vsevolod married Henry IV. of Germany; Vladimir, the grandson of Yaroslaf, married Gyda, the daughter of Harold II. King of England; their son, Mstislaf, married Christina, daughter of the King of Sweden. Such a close connection between the Scandinavian and Russian courts is not likely to have obtained if the members belonged to different races. Scandinavian conquerors to some extent mixed with the peoples whose territory they occupied; usually they married their own race. They fought with each other on matters of precedence and succession; they thought much of personal valour and honour, and lived in the present with little regard to dynasty. They, as little as the Slavs to-day, would pay tribute to suzerains.

Doubtless the Varangian leaders and their military companions, subsequently known as the drujni of the Russian princes, gave to the Slav character love of enterprise and power to initiate—traits which have always distinguished Russian nobles from the peasantry. Again, the “Russkaia Pravda” of the tenth century is contemporary with and akin to “Knut’s Code,” which the English usually, but wrongly, attribute to King Alfred. One other point tells in favour of Scandinavian dominion: the freedom accorded to women and the high position some of them took in the state. But their privileges and influence declined with the ascendency of the Slav, and the seclusion of women in the Asiatic manner subsequently obtained in Moscow and lasted there until the days of Peter the Great.

The Northmen introduced into Russia their system of succession, the odelsret that still prevails in Norway. The descendants of Rurik, with their military comrades, fought against each other for the throne of Kief, or the inheritance of other possessions. As with each succeeding generation the princely family multiplied, the country was rent with dissensions. Now the ruler of Kief, then he of Novgorod became paramount; in 1158 the reigning prince of Vladimir succeeded, and, for the time, Kief became of second importance. The history of Russia during the tenth and succeeding centuries is a story of strife and disaster. Wars, with varying success, against Poles, Swedes, Lithuanians, and the predatory tribes on the south and east; fires, famine, pestilence, succeeded each other and re-occurred. In 1124 Kief, the opulent and sacred city, was destroyed by fire; some years later Novgorod was depopulated by famine; robbers exacted blackmail from voyagers on the great waterways; trade decayed. In 1224 the Russians made common cause with their enemy the Polovtsi to repel an invasion of Tartars; they were beaten and Kief fell—50,000 of its inhabitants being put to the sword. Thirteen years later a second invasion of the Tartars resulted in the fall of Vladimir and the subjection of southern and eastern Russia to Mongol rule. Livonians, Swedes and Danes attacked Novgorod, but were repulsed. Pressed on these sides the Russians could extend only towards the inhospitable north. In these times and with this environment Moscow was founded, and nursed; became a rallying point for the Slav race; grew strong and rich; and, by the genius of its rulers, dominated Russia.

Slowly but surely the Scandinavian element was absorbed; with Ivan I. (1328-1341) the time of transition practically ended. A new policy of aggrandisement was adopted and the Muscovite was evolved from the Slav race. Round Moscow, subject to the Tartar yoke, the people became patient and resigned; born to endure bad fortune, they could profit by good. The princes of Moscow gained their ends by intrigue, by corruption, by the purchase of consciences, by servility to the Tartar Khans, by perfidy to their equals, by murder and treachery. “Politic and persevering, prudent and pitiless, it is their honour to have created the living germ which became great Russia.”

CHAPTER II
Origin and Early History

“Away in the depths of the primeval forest, where one heard the low chanting of the solitary hermit in his retreat, arises the glorious Kremlin of Moscow town.”

M. Dmitriev.

IT is generally believed that the word Moscow is of Finnish origin; in an old dialect kva means water, the exact significance of Mos is undecided, probably Moskva implies “the-way,” simply—the water-route to some trading point reached by this river from the Volga and Oka. It was the name by which the river was known, and from time immemorial there have been villages on the banks of the stream near the present town of Moscow.

In the ninth century the hill which the Kremlin now covers was virgin forest. According to tradition Bookal, a hermit, was living there in 882, when Oleg, on his return to Novgorod from Kief, paused there and laid the first stone of the city. Sulkhovski, who had access to the archives of Moscow prior to their removal on the French invasion, asserts that there was documentary proof of this then in existence, but his statement lacks confirmation.

The chroniclers make no mention of Moscow until 1147. Between the foundation of the Rurik dynasty and this date the dominion of the Northmen had extended, and, divided and subdivided as generation succeeded generation, was split up into many districts, each ruled by a descendant of Rurik. These princes all claimed kinship, admitted the rights of their elders and the rule of the head of the house in Kief. In addition to the residences of the princes, their drujni, that is “war companions” or friends, had “halls,” and held, subject to their prince, one or more villages. In the twelfth century one Stephen Kutchko had his hall near the Chisty Prud in Moscow, and the villages between the Moskva and the Yauza, with others, were within his lordship.

In 1147 Yuri Dolgoruki, the Prince of Suzdal, in whose country Moscow was situated, agreed to meet his kinsmen Sviatoslaf and Oleg of Novgorod on the banks of the Moskva river, and thither they came with their drujni, and others, all of whom were so sumptuously entertained by Yuri, that the fame of Moscow and of Yuri was noised abroad.

As the river Moskva was a highway for traffic between Suzdal, Vladimir and the Volga in the east, with Smolensk in the west and Kief in the south, the villages on its banks were important. The hill on which the Kremlin stands appeared to Yuri a point of vantage, and, as it was near the boundary of his territory, he there constructed a fortress and also built, or rebuilt or enlarged, the church which served for the inhabitants of the village of Kutchkovo hard by, and for those of other villages in the neighbourhood.

All chroniclers agree that Yuri was the first to make a stronghold of the hill on the Moskva; most state further that he put to death Stephen Kutchko, but attribute this act to different causes. One story has it that Yuri wished to wed the wife of Stephen, so put him out of the way. As Yuri was but recently married to a kinswoman of Mstislaf, and so allied to the dominant house in Novgorod, this story is improbable. Another legend is to the effect that Kutchko, proud

of his village, refused due homage to his superior lord, and so suffered; and another that a village was taken from Kutchko to endow Andrew Bogoloobski, a son of Yuri’s wedded to the daughter of a neighbouring boyard, whence the trouble. This last story is supported by the fact that later the sons of the killed Kutchko conspired against the enriched Andrew Bogoloobski; one was killed in attacking him, whilst the other succeeded in avenging a wrong done. Later historians are of opinion that Kutchko was an interloper from Black Russia or Podolia, trespassing on the territory of Yuri, who treated him as a usurper.

It was in 1156 that Moscow became a town—just a cluster of dwellings on the Kremlin hill with a fence extending from the narrow stream Neglinnaia (now a covered sewer under the Alexander Gardens), from the Troitski Gate to the Moskva at, or near, the Tainitski Gate. The chief house was built on the spot now covered by the Orujnia Palata. A church, Spass na Boru, St Saviour of the Pines, is supposed to have existed where the church of that name, the oldest building in the Kremlin, now stands. Another church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, once existed nearer the foot of the hill, and its altar was removed to the chapel adjoining the Borovitski Gate when a later erection was demolished. Both of these churches were known as “In the Wood,” and the name still preserves the memory of the thick forest that once covered the hill, and probably extended far and near on both sides of the Moskva.

The founder of Moscow, Kniaz Yuri Dolgoruki Vladimirovich, or, as the English call him, Prince George Long-ith’-arm, Vladimir’s son, was a son of that Prince of Kief who married Gyda, the daughter of Harold II. of England. Yuri, like his father, was a man of great energy and did much to strengthen and improve the towns within his territory. He is described as “above the middle height, stout, fair complexioned, with a large nose, long and crooked; his chin small; a great lover of women, sweet things and liquor; great at merry-makings, and not backward in war.”

For a century or more Moscow remained in obscurity, an insignificant appanage of the younger sons of the princes of Suzdal. It was long before any of the reigning house made it a place of residence. In the meantime, a stronghold, it attracted traders and the attention of enemies. Gleb of Riazan has the distinction of being the first to set fire to the town, but the earliest enemy of importance was the Tartar.

In 1224 the Golden Horde defeated the Slavs in South Russia, destroyed Kief, marched towards Novgorod Sverski, then, “without ostensible reason,” returned to Bokhara, to the camp of their leader, Khingiz Khan. In 1237 Baati, a grandson of Khingiz, crossed the Volga and laid the country waste. On the march of this horde westward Moscow was burnt; Vladimir was first taken. There the princess and other persons of distinction took refuge in a church, where they were burnt alive. Yuri II., the reigning prince, absent at the time, then attempted revenge and was slain in battle. There was little resistance; the Tartars subdued many towns and reduced whole provinces; marched within sixty miles of Novgorod Sverski, then again “without ostensible cause” turned eastward and left Russia.

The Tartar was not driven from his own country; he raided because it was his nature so to do. The object of these early incursions, as of subsequent raids into Russian territory, was “to get stores of captives, both boys and girls, whom they sell to the Turks and other neighbouring Mahometan countries.” Rich towns, therefore, could buy the Tartar off; a fact

which influenced the later policy of the Muscovites. Poor towns and ill-protected districts were, until a comparatively recent period, liable to “slave-raids” from Tartars and others. The Sultan Ahmed I. of Constantinople asked of Osman, his eldest son and heir, “My Osman, wilt thou conquer Crete for me?”

“What have I to do with Crete? I will conquer the land of the white Russian girls,” answered the boy. And as he thought to do, so many of his race did. It was not until the present century that the exchange of prisoners of war became the practice of Turks and Russians. The Tartars, with their enormous crowd of captives, could not winter in Russia, hence their timely withdrawal “without ostensible cause” on several occasions.

Moscow was soon rebuilt after this Tartar invasion. A few years later Michael Khorobrit, a brother of the successful Alexander Nevski, ruler of Novgorod, succeeded to Moscow, and became its first actual prince; but during the war the Lithuanians commenced against Novgorod in 1242, Michael was killed. Tradition has it that this Michael was the builder of the first cathedral of the Archangel in the Kremlin.

He was succeeded in Moscow by Daniel, the fourth son of Alexander Nevski, and thenceforward the fortunes of Novgorod and Moscow were more in common. Moscow was chief of the few villages Daniel received as his portion. He made the most of it. In 1293 the Tartars, under Dudenia, fired the town and destroyed the churches, monastery, and all buildings on the Kremlin hill. Daniel set energetically to work to build a larger and stronger town. He re-erected the church Spass na Boru; built the cathedral of the Archangel, and that of the Annunciation; founded the Danilof monastery, and incorporated the one known as Krutitski. He so added to the town that it quickly became prosperous, and when he died in 1303 his son, George, succeeded to a position of wealth and power. Daniel was of the line of Rurik, and from him were descended the subsequently mighty race of Moscow Tsars. George acquired Mojaisk; then began a struggle with Tver, which continued from father to son, lasted eighty years. The quarrel arose from a disputed succession. Andrew, Prince of Suzdal, died in 1304; George of Moscow, his nephew, wished to succeed him. His right to do so was questioned by Michael of Tver, who was cousin-german of the deceased. Michael, the eldest, was accepted by the boyars, and his election was confirmed by the Tartars, who claimed the right of appointing the sovereign. George then caused himself to be recognised as a Prince of Novgorod, and still disputed. Michael besieged him in Moscow, and for a time there was peace. Then George again attempted to obtain Tver, and a second time he was forced to take refuge in Moscow, which was again besieged by Michael.

Tokhta, Khan of the Golden Horde of Tartars on the Volga, died; he was succeeded by Usbek, to whom George of Moscow at once repaired to do homage and obtain favours. He so represented affairs to Usbek that he obtained from him his sister Kontchaka in marriage, and was adjudged rightful successor to Andrew of Suzdal. George returned to Russia accompanied by a Mongol army under a baskak, one Kavgadi. The boyards still supported Michael, who was a great fighter. Michael, refusing to submit to Kavgadi, was accused of having drawn sword against an envoy of the Khan, and later, when Kontchaka died, of having poisoned her. To arrange this matter Michael, busy in defending his province against other enemies, sent his twelve-year old son to the Horde; George went himself and compassed the fall of his rival. The Khan reluctantly complied with George’s request for a sentence of death upon Michael; it was no sooner granted than George hastened away to give it effect, and Michael was done to death in his tent by George’s servants. Michael became a saint; George the all-powerful ruler of Moscow, Suzdal and Novgorod.

Dmitri, of the “terrible eyes,” son of Michael, succeeded to Tver and determined upon revenge. When at last he met George of Moscow he slew him, but for thus going against his superior prince was himself put to death, and his brother, Alexander, succeeded him in Vladimir in 1325.

Such is the story of the little wooden town. Its rulers—with, possibly, the exception of Daniel—regarded it merely as a property, the possession of which might lead to the acquisition of a more important capital. It flourished because it was in the midst of a country that was self-supporting, as well as being conveniently situated as a mart for the interchange of products from north and south, east and west. Its disasters were such as other towns suffered; its advantages of site they did not possess.

CHAPTER III
Moscow under the Mongols

“At Sara, in the lande of Tartarie,
There dwelled a king who werryed Russie.”
Chaucer—Story of Cambuscan bold.

THE first real prince of Moscow was Ivan I., surnamed “Kalita” (the Purser), who of his own right inherited Moscow from his father, Daniel, and by the grace of the Khan, was also Grand Prince of Vladimir in succession to his brother George. He made alliances, matrimonial and other, for himself and his, so adding to his possessions, and by purchase acquiring also Uglitch, Galitch and Bielozersk. Like his brother he kept on good terms with the Khan. At the command of Usbek he made war on Tver, Novgorod and Pskov. The Tartar Horde and the Muscovites fought in concert against Russian enemies. When Tver rose against the Tartar, Ivan, with Moscow, was on the side of the Mongols. When Usbek ordered him to produce Alexander of Tver, who was a fugitive in Pskov, Ivan induced the metropolitan to interdict Alexander and the Pskovians—thus a Christian prince and people were excommunicated by their own kin at the behest of Tartars.

Ivan “Kalita,” in his turn, served the church well. Peter, the metropolitan of Vladimir, had often resided in Moscow; Theognistus lived there almost constantly; and for Ivan, Vladimir was only the town in which he had been crowned. It was in Moscow that he lived and for Moscow he worked. In order to make it attractive to the metropolitan and to obtain for it the religious supremacy which had first belonged to Kiev, then to Vladimir, he built magnificent churches—notably that of the Assumption (Uspenski Sober)—and was practically successful in so far that Moscow had the prestige of a metropolis; but Vladimir remained the legal capital, and as such was recognised by the Khans.

Ivan surrounded the hill with a wall of oak in place of the deal fence formerly its sole protection, and he gave to the enclosure the Tartar name of “Kreml” or fortress. This then included his own dwelling; the cathedrals of the Assumption, of the Annunciation and of the Archangel Michael; the churches of Spass na Boru and of St John the Baptist; as also the dwellings of his drujni, followers and military companions. It was at his instigation too, that Sergius founded the Troitsa monastery in order to rival the Pecherskoi monastery and catacombs of Kiev. Ivan knew well the power of money and was free in using it; he was cunning, unscrupulous and discerning. He demanded and obtained from Novgorod more than he intended to pay on her behalf to Usbek, and was everywhere successful as farmer-general of taxes and imposts made on Russia by the Horde. When he died, in 1341, he ordered that Moscow should not be divided, and he left by far the largest portion of his possessions to his son Simeon, surnamed “The Proud.”

Simeon, most submissive before the Khan, bought over the horde by using his father’s treasure. To his brothers he was haughty and overbearing. As intermediary between the Tartars and Russian states he enjoyed privileges denied to his seniors, and arrogated to himself the title and position of “Prince of all the Russias.” He continued his father’s policy in Moscow, engaging Greek artists to ornament the cathedrals, and many native workmen to enlarge and improve the buildings within the Kremlin, spending upon Moscow the tribute he exacted from Novgorod and other towns.

Ivan II. who succeeded him, 1353, was of quite another sort. Gentle, pacific, lovable—all outraged him; he would have lost his throne had not the church supported him loyally. Moris, a monk, quelled a revolt; a fire destroyed the Kremlin; when he died the succession to the title of Grand Duke, which his three predecessors had made such efforts to keep in the house of Moscow, passed to their kinsmen at Suzdal.

Alexis, the metropolitan, saved the supremacy of Moscow. After crowning Dmitri at Vladimir he returned to Moscow to take charge of the children of Ivan II. and refused to leave the town. Dmitri was in his ninth year when he succeeded his father in Moscow, and remained in the tutelage of the church for many years. It was to the prompting of Alexis even more than to that of his own kinsmen that the breach of the Tartar alliance is due. Dmitri availed himself of a division in the Tartar horde to question the supremacy of either leader. Later he had the courage to visit Mamai—who was then the more powerful—and had the good luck to get back alive. Seven years later he won a battle against Mamai, in Riazan.

In 1635 a fire on All Saints’ Day destroyed the Kremlin wall and, a storm raging at the time, Moscow was almost in ruins. In 1367 the Kremlin was surrounded with a new wall—of masonry—and in the following year this was put to the test when an attack was made on Moscow by some bands of pagan Lithuanians under Olgerd, his brother Kistut and his subsequently famous nephew Vitovt. “Olgerd camped before the walls, pillaged the churches and monasteries in the neighbourhood, but did not assault the Kremlin, the walls of which frightened him.” Two years later he returned to the attack, but his enterprise was unsuccessful. In the meantime Mamai, the Tartar leader, had matured his scheme of revenge. In 1380 he had collected his forces and was marching on Moscow when Dmitri, with the aid of all the neighbouring princes, got together an immense army and determined to give battle.

The confederate troops gathered in the Kremlin included contingents supplied by the princes of Rostov, Bielozersk and Yaroslaf, and the boyards of Vladimir, Suzdal, Uglitch, Serpukhov, Dmitrov, Mojaisk and other towns. After service in the cathedral they left by the Frolovski (Spasski) Nikolski and other gates in the east wall, escorted by the clergy with crucifixes and miracle-working ikons, the troops marching behind a black standard on which was painted a portrait of the Saviour on a nimbus of gold.

Dmitri before advancing against the Tartars went to St Sergius at the Troitsa monastery to ask his blessing, and was there comforted with a prophecy of victory. More, Sergius sent two monks, Osliabia and Peresvet, to encourage the Muscovites. They wore a cross on their cowls and went into the thick of the battle. Peresvet was found dead on the field tightly grasping a Patsinak giant who had slain him. The armies met at Kulikovo on the Don, where Dmitri with his 150,000 men after a hard fight obtained the victory, and Mamai fled. The battle was really won by the troops of Vladimir and Dmitri of Volhynia, whose men remained in ambush until the best moment for attack came.

With historians Dmitri, who, badly wounded, was found in a swoon after the battle, is the hero of the day, and he added the name of Donskoi to commemorate the victory. Sophronius, a priest of Riazan, who wrote an epic of the battle, awards chief honours to the monks, and makes St Sergius, through them, support the courage of Dmitri at critical stages.

Though Mamai was beaten by Dmitri, he fought again before he fell into the hands of his rival Tamerlane, who put him to death. Then Tamerlane sent an envoy to Dmitri acquainting him with the fact that their common enemy had been vanquished and calling upon him and all Russian princes to present themselves to him and make their homage to the Horde.

Dmitri failed to comply, and when the Tartars advanced into his territory he tried to raise an army to oppose them. The princes who had promised him support failed to afford it, and Dmitri, unable to get 40,000 men together, was still waiting reinforcements at Kostroma when the Tartars under Tokhtamysh, a descendant of Khingis Khan, appeared before the walls of Moscow.

The defence of the Kremlin was in the hands of a Lithuanian, Ostei, and the Tartar attack was repulsed; boiling water being thrown from the towers; stones and baulks of timber dropped from the walls upon the assailants in the ditch. For three days the Tartars tried to effect an entrance by force. Then Tokhtamysh stated that it was not with the people of Moscow the Tartars were at war, but only with their prince and his companions, inviting those who had sought refuge in the Kremlin to come out and occupy their dwellings where they would not be molested. The besieged believed him, and, laden with presents and preceded by the clergy, they went out of the Kremlin to meet the enemy as friends. The Tartars at once fell upon them, killed Ostei and the other leaders, and forced a way into the fortress. The defenders were demoralised, “they cried out like feeble women and tore their hair, making no attempt even to save themselves. The Tartars slew without mercy; 24,000 perished. They broke into the churches and treasuries, pillaged everywhere, and burned a mass of books, papers and whatever they could not otherwise destroy; not a house was left standing save the few built of stone.”

After Tokhtamysh withdrew Dmitri returned and was horrified at the ruin wrought. He is said to have repented of his victory over the Tartars at Kulikovo, a barren victory after this desolation, and to have called out “Our fathers who never triumphed over Tartars were less unhappy than we.”

Moscow was quickly rebuilt. When Dmitri died in 1389 the principality was the largest and most thriving of the states in the north-east of Russia. As the Horde withdrew the “Good companions” from Novgorod devastated the country round, but Vladimir and Moscow alike in having a Kremlin on a hill, were far enough away from the Volga to escape the attention of these free-booters from the north-west.

Vasili, the son of Dmitri Donskoi, succeeded his father, and twice saw his territory invaded by the Horde. In 1392 he bought a iarlikh of the Tartars freeing to him Moscow, Nijni and Suzdal. In 1395, to escape an inroad of the Tartars, the celebrated ikon of the Virgin (see Frontispiece) was brought from Vladimir to Moscow, but the Tartars did not venture so far. This time they stopped at Eletz-on-the-Don, pillaged Azov—where much Egyptian, Venetian, Genoese, Biscayan and other merchandise was warehoused—and returned to Tartary sacking Sarai and Astrakhan on their way thither.

During these turbulent times Moscow increased in importance. The two years of peace Dmitri secured after his victory at Kulikovo he used to strengthen the defences. Already, in 1637, he had substituted a wall of masonry for the old wood rampart round the Kremlin; now handsome gates with towers were added. Its finest church at this period was that of the Transfiguration, more usually styled “Spass na Boru,” which, built in stone in 1330, had been considerably enlarged and a monastery attached; there were the cells in or near the church building, vaults below it for secreting treasure, a hospital for the infirm, and a cemetery for the princes, but their tombs were subsequently transferred to the Archangelski Sobor.

Within the Kremlin, or near by, were the monasteries of Chudof (Miracles), Vossnesenski (Ascension), Bogoyavlenni (Epiphany), Rojdestvenski (Nativity), St Alexis, St Peter the Apostle, of Daniel, Simon, and Spasso-Preobrajenni (the Transfiguration). To commemorate the withdrawal of Tamerlane, Vasili founded the monastery of the Sretenka (Meeting). He made a fosse across the town from the field of Kuchko to the river Moskva, and later surrounded the town with a stone wall.

A strong place now; the lesser nobles, cadets of the house of Rurik, took up their residence in Moscow and shared its fortune.

In 1408 the Lithuanians aided by the Tartars laid siege to Moscow, a siege which is memorable from the fact that cannons were then first used in its defence, though Mamai had brought Genoese gunners against Dmitri twenty years earlier. Ediger led the assault, and, though his forces had to retreat, the boyards of Moscow paid to him 3000 roubles as a war indemnity; the Monastery of St Sergius at Troitsa was burned, the surrounding country pillaged and the peasants ruthlessly slaughtered.

It cannot be said that the first Vasili did much for Moscow. He was in retreat at Kostroma when the inhabitants of the town, led by “Vladimir the Brave,” successfully defended it; both pestilence and famine were frequent during his reign of thirty-six years, and at his death the succession was disputed.

In 1431 Yuri attempted to revert to the ancient custom of succession of the eldest, and claimed the throne from Vasili II., the son of Vasili I. To avoid war it was agreed to refer the matter to the Horde for settlement. Vsevoloshski, a boyard of Moscow, advanced the most potent argument on behalf of Vasili. “My Lord Tsar,” he said to Ulu Mahomet, “let me speak, me, the slave of the Grand Prince. My master prays for the throne, which is thy property, having no other title but thy protection, thy investiture and thy iarlikh. Thou art master and can dispose of it at thy pleasure. My lord, the Prince Yuri Dmitrovich, my master’s uncle, claims the throne of the Grand Prince by the act and will of his father, but not as a favour from the all powerful.” This flattery had a suitable reward; the Khan appointed Vasili to the throne, and ordered Yuri to lead his nephew’s horse by the bridle.

Vasili II. was crowned at Moscow, not at Vladimir, and the supremacy of Moscow was admitted. Vasili was to have married a daughter of Vsevoloshski, but instead married a grand-daughter of Vladimir the Brave, the defender of Moscow. The offended boyard went over to the side of Yuri and fanned his resentment. Yuri’s two sons, Vasili, the squint-eyed, and Chemiaki were present at the marriage festivities of Vasili, whose mother, the Princess Sophia, seeing round the waist of the young Vasili a belt of gold that had belonged to Dmitri Donskoi, there and then seized it from him. The brothers took umbrage at this open affront; forthwith they

left Moscow and induced their father to take up arms.

At Kostroma, Vasili II. fell into the power of Yuri, who spared his life and gave him Kostroma as an appanage, betaking himself to Moscow. Thereupon the inhabitants of Moscow deserted the town and took up residence with their prince in Kostroma. Owing to the popularity of Vasili II., Yuri was powerless and sent to him at Kostroma inviting him to return to his own. On his return the people crowded round him “like bees round their queen.” Later, Vasili, the squint-eyed, fell into the hands of Vasili II., who had his eyes put out; then at once repenting the act, set free his brother Chemiaki, and war again broke out between them. Chemiaki with a host of free lances “good companions” and such men as he could get together besieged Moscow. Then in came the Tartar horde and Vasili could get but 15,000 men together to oppose them. He made a valiant struggle, but, wounded in fifteen places, he was taken prisoner to Kazan.

Moscow was in despair: Tver insulted her and Chemiaki intrigued to get himself made prince. Then the Khan suddenly agreed to liberate Vasili II. for a small ransom, and soon the prince was in his capital again. He went forthwith to Troitsa to return thanks for his escape. During his absence, Chemiaki surprised the Kremlin and there captured the wife and mother of Vasili and took all the treasure. Hurrying after Vasili to Troitsa, he made him prisoner, brought him back to Moscow, and in 1446 put out his eyes in revenge for the like act upon his brother Vasili. Chemiaki, some time afterwards, left Moscow to go against the Tartars; the town revolted during his absence and Vasili was once more restored to the throne, which as “Vasili the Blind” he held until his death in 1462.

It is not easy to account for the popularity of Vasili II.; possibly the detestation in which Chemiaki was held made the mild virtues of Vasili more prominent; for in the language of the people, a “judgment of Chemiaki” is, proverbially, tantamount to a crying wrong.

Events outside Russia strengthened the supremacy of Moscow. At the Council of Florence (1439) Pope Eugene suggested the union of the eastern and western churches, and amongst the many representatives of the eastern church present Isidor, the metropolitan of Moscow, agreed to the proposal and signed the act of union. How Mark, Bishop of Ephesus, protested, and at last carried the Greeks with him in repudiating the union, is no part of this history. Isidor having accepted, introduced the Latin cross, made use of the name of the Pope in the services and so astonished the Russians that Vasili interfered. He reproached Isidor for his bad faith, and in dismay the prelate fled to Rome. In 1453 Mahomet II. entered Constantinople. There was no longer a Christian emperor of the east, and Moscow became the heir of Constantinople and the metropolis of orthodoxy. Ivan, the artist-monk of Constantinople, brought to Moscow such of the holy relics as he could save, and, what is more, by his own genius impressed upon the Muscovite priesthood a love of culture to which Moscow had hitherto been a stranger.

Ivan III., styled “The Uniter of Russia,” was twenty-two years of age when, in 1462, he succeeded his father Vasili, the Blind. He continued the policy of the princes of Moscow and early obtained a success against the Tartars of Kazan. In 1472 he married Sophia, a daughter of Thomas Paleologus, a brother of the last emperor of Byzantium, and this union, with a member of the race that had so long held sway over all orthodox Christianity, greatly influenced his policy. His wife, less patient than the Russians, found the Mongol yoke unbearable. “How long am I to be the slave of Tartars?” she would ask, and there is little doubt that it is to her urging that Ivan became aggressive. He was not personally courageous, preferring to remain in Moscow, and allow his people to fight on the frontiers of Russia; when forced into the field, his method was to avoid giving battle and wear out the enemy with delays, retreats, and puzzling, irritating marches and counter-marches.

In 1472 he conquered Perm; in 1475 he was successful against Novgorod the Great; in 1478 he openly rebelled against the Khan; in 1499 he pushed the confines of Russia to Petchora on the Arctic Sea. He was a puzzle to his enemies, gaining victories over Lithuanians, Livonians and Siberians, without leaving the Kremlin. Stephen of Moldavia said of him, “Ivan is a strange man; he stays quietly at home yet triumphs over his enemies, whilst I, although always on horseback, cannot defend my own country.”

Born a despot he was initiated into the mysteries of autocratic government by his wife. Cold, cruel and cunning, he brooked no opposition where he thought he could triumph; was an arrant coward whenever the issue was doubtful.

When he vanquished Novgorod, he brought the boyards to Moscow, and settled them there; three years later he tortured some, and put others to death. He was relentless in punishing rebellion, no matter what the rank of the offender. He whipped Prince Oukhtomski, and ordered the archimandrite of a monastery to be flogged; mutilated the counsellors of his son, cowed the boyards, burnt alive Poles who had conspired against him; pillaged the German traders of goods to the value of £40,000, and played the tyrant so thoroughly that even when he slept no boyard “durst open his mouth in whispers” for fear of disturbing his master’s slumber.

Towards the Great Horde he was both respectful and recalcitrant. He repulsed the invasions of adventurers into his territory; avoided the payment of tribute by sending costly presents regularly. But in 1478, when Khan Akhmet sent envoys with his image to receive tribute, Ivan openly rebelled; put all the messengers to death, save one; trampled the image of the Khan under foot, spat on the edict, and allowed this news to reach the Khan. When the enraged Tartars advanced towards Moscow, Ivan wished to remain in the city, but the inhabitants would have no shirking. “What! he has overtaxed us, refused to pay tribute to the Horde, and now that he has enraged the Khan, though he does not want to fight, he must—and shall.” Ivan journeyed about from one town to another, returning to Moscow on various pretexts. He wished to consult the clergy, the boyards, his mother, anybody. The answer was always the same, “March against the enemy!” Forced to go South, he wished to send his son back to Moscow, but the young Ivan disobeyed.

Archbishop Vassian urged Ivan to go to the front. “Is it part of mortals to fear death? We cannot escape destiny; a good shepherd will, at need, lay down his life for his flock.” But this prompting did not suffice. Vassian at last lost patience, wrote a bellicose letter to Ivan, recounting the deeds of his heroic ancestors, from Igor Sviatoslaf to Dmitri Donskoi. Ivan assured him that this letter “filled his heart with joy, himself with courage and strength”; but another fortnight passed, and Ivan had not advanced a step.

When at last the two armies came within sight of each other, the streams Oogra and Oka separated them. They insulted each other bravely across the water, but not daring to ford, waited until the river should be frozen. When this happened, Ivan at once gave orders for his forces to withdraw. Seeing the army in motion an inexplicable panic seized the Tartars, and they hastened away. Both armies were in flight, and no one pursuing. In such pitiful fashion did the Mongol supremacy terminate. For more than three centuries Moscow had acknowledged the rule of the Golden Horde, now a thoroughly demoralised rabble. The remnants in their flight south were opposed by the Nogay and Krim Tartars, and defeated. The Khan Akhmet was then put to death by his own men.

Ivan next sent his voievodes or “war-leaders” against Kazan; in 1487 they took it and made Alegam, its commander, a prisoner. In his boyhood Ivan had been imprisoned in Kazan by his Tartar enemies, and so now was able to turn the tables on them completely.

His next act exemplifies his statesmanship. Instead of annexing Kazan to Moscow he gave the crown to the nephew of his powerful ally, the Khan of the Krim Tartars. This Khan could not ask for the release of Alegam, because he was an enemy of his own nephew, the newly installed ruler of Kazan; but the leaders of the Khivan and Nogay Tartars, who were related to him, felt that Islam had been wronged, and despatched an envoy to Moscow praying for Alegam’s release. Ivan declined, but did so graciously, and gave no offence. He made the envoys presents, and sent to their leaders other presents, much foreign cloth and trinkets for their wives, whom he styled his sisters. Ivan did not treat directly with the envoys, making use of the western method of conducting negotiations through an officer of his court.

Ivan took the two-headed eagle as the arms of his country. Its early form is still to be seen on the wall of Granovitaia palace in the Kremlin. The device of St George and the Dragon, which Yuri Dolgoruki the founder of Moscow used, was from this time more closely associated with the city of Moscow, and the eagle taken as the arms of the ruler.

When it became necessary for Ivan to appoint his successor he hesitated, and at last made choice of Dmitri, the son of Ivan, his eldest child, then dead. His wife advanced the claims of her own son Vasili; his daughter-in-law, Ivan’s widow, her own son. Having proclaimed Dmitri heir, he threw Vasili into prison and degraded his wife; then he changed his mind, imprisoned his daughter-in-law and grandson, and proclaimed Vasili his heir. In 1505 he died, and Vasili was at once crowned ruler of Moscow.

CHAPTER IV
Moscow of the Princes

“As pearls thy thousand crowns appear,
Thy hands a diamond sceptre hold,
Thy domes, thy steeples, bright and clear
Seem sunny rays in eastern gold.”—Dmitriev.

VASILI III. succeeded his father and reigned in Moscow for nearly thirty years. From the historical point of view, he is unfortunate, as he followed a sovereign recognised as “Great,” whose conquests and innovations changed the destiny of Moscow, and was succeeded by a ruler, who, by his barbarities, won for himself the surname of “Terrible.” Vasili III. was not a warrior, and when he made war it was by preference against Slavonic peoples in the west. His chief delight was in building: churches, monasteries, city-walls, palaces—none of these came amiss to him; he constructed some of all, leaving Moscow much stronger, richer and more beautiful than he found it. He made the most of such services as the Italian masters could render, but in those times, all that was done in Moscow in any one age appears to have been executed at the command of the reigning prince. The houses of the nobility have all disappeared, and to the date of Vasili III. there appear to have been no founders of churches in Moscow, other than the princes. Not that these necessarily found the labour or material; as often as not a church was built from the proceeds of a fine laid upon some town or government at the pleasure of the prince.

Vasili was the first to build a stone palace in the Kremlin, that known as the Granovitaia, which is still standing. But Herberstein wrote that Vasili would not live in it, preferring his old palace of wood.

During his reign the Tartars got as near Moscow as the Sparrow Hills; there they sacked the royal palace and cellars containing large stores of mead. They became intoxicated with the liquor and advanced no further, but the leader obtained from Vasili a treaty in which he acknowledged the sovereignty of the Horde and promised yearly tribute. Vasili’s voievodes at Riazan, thinking the terms shameful, intercepted the returning Tartars, routed them, and got back the treaty. The following year, goaded to action, Vasili got an army together and went out towards the Khan, challenging him to battle. The Khan answered that he knew the way into Russia, and was not in the habit of asking his enemies when he should fight. In revenge for this insult, Vasili established a fair at Makharief, on the Volga; it ruined the mart of Kazan and was subsequently moved to Nijni-Novgorod, where it is still held yearly.

Vasili married first, Solomonia Saburov, but, as after twenty years of married life she had no son, he forced her to take the veil and married Helena Glinski, of Lithuania. This gave great offence to the Church; when he sent specially to the highest authority on the technical question, Mark, Patriarch of Jerusalem, is reported to have made the following remarkable prediction:—

“Shouldst thou contract a second marriage thou shalt have a wicked son; thy states shall become a prey to terrors and tears; rivers of blood shall flow; the heads of the mighty shall fall; thy cities shall be devoured by flames.”

Vasili disregarded the decision of the Church and married a most able and enlightened woman, who had the foresight to surround the Kitai Gorod with a wall of good masonry, and it is said, named that part of the town after a similarly designated enclosure in her native place. She bore Vasili two sons, Ivan, the Tsarevich, who was later the “terrible” Tsar, succeeding to the throne in 1533, when but three years of age. The younger son, Yuri, fared badly at the hands of his cruel brother.

The Moscow of the Princes was of wood, and the vestiges remaining are unimportant. Some of the later buildings, as the palace of the Terem and towers of the Kremlin wall, have been built in the style of the wooden erections they replaced; but it is not easy to picture Moscow as it was before Ivan’s Italian workmen raised their walls of brick and stone.

The town was of great size; in 1520 it contained 41,500 dwellings and 100,000 inhabitants. Its circumference was nearly twelve miles. The Grand Prince and his relations lived in the Kremlin; so did a few of the richest and most powerful nobles. In the Kitai Gorod lived the traders, the wealthy boyards and foreigners. The Bielo Gorod, “White” or Free Town, was occupied by boyards, merchants and privileged citizens; in the outer ring lived the artisans and labourers. The churches and chapels were numerous. Ivan Kalita built ten when there were already eighteen in the town, in 1337; in the reign of Vasili III. there were as many monasteries and nunneries, and upwards of three score churches and chapels.

The first dwelling in the Kremlin was the Prince’s habitation, originally called the Prince’s apartment, which served only as a pied à terre for the Prince when passing through. When Moscow became a place of residence then a house was put up near where the Great Palace now is. Then followed the usual dependences; including a prison or dungeon. Even at that early date the Russian carpenters were able craftsmen; how expert they afterwards became the wonderful wooden palaces and churches of Russia accurately demonstrate.

The Princes of Moscow were not extravagant, their palaces consisting of four chambers, en suite—the one most distant from the entrance was the sleeping-room; then, adjoining it, the oratory or private chapel; the room for living or affairs of the town, the anti-chamber; the vestibule; add kitchens and domestic rooms on a lower floor, and the early palaces of the Russian princes is complete.

Vasili III. required no more; his palace in the Kremlin consisted, on the bel étage, of the vestibule, an anti-chamber, and two rooms. In a separate building, reached by a corridor or covered staircase, the bathroom and storerooms. Above the bel étage, either a large open loft, or a belvedere pierced with windows on all sides and communicating with the terrace. The apartments reserved for the children, and for relations of the sovereign, were in separate buildings offering similar accommodation.

The roof was invariably ornamented with carved wood-work and with gay colours. The distinctive colour for the windows of the Terem was red. Further ornamentation consisted in shaping the roof conical, making it arched or in superposing cones on two arches; these were furnished with small grills and covered with shingles.

Each house had its private chapel, so the agglomeration of connected buildings that constituted a palace in the Kremlin in old days contained many chapels, and they now number more than a dozen. Apart from these private chapels within the palace, the Princes used the churches for the safer keeping of their treasure.

Ivan III. used the Church of St Lazarus now in the palace for his treasury; his wife, the Church of St John the Baptist, near the Borovitski Gate. To steal from the church was sacrilege, to take from the house of even the Tsar, simply robbery. The churches were used as treasuries also by the nobles, and doubtless much of the church-plate throughout Russia was originally deposited for safe keeping, whilst the owners went against Tartars or Livonians. All the churches were rich, and all, time after time, were spoiled by invaders; thus hiding-places were made in or near all the old churches.

Near the residence of the ruler were the very similar dwellings of the minor princes. In the days of Vasili III., of Grand Dukes even, for, as Moscow conquered other principalities, their former rulers were brought to the Kremlin and lived under the surveillance of the “Grand Prince of all the Russias,” rendering him such military service as he demanded. In time these nobles became an element of danger, intriguing for the succession and quarrelling among themselves for precedence. Vasili III. was the first ruler to treat them harshly and he spared none, not even his own near relatives if he thought they aspired to the succession. To render them less dangerous they were not employed as war-leaders, men of lower rank, the drujni of the Tsar and other princes being entrusted with command in the field and acting also as governors of provinces. Burned down time after time and usually put up again in wood, Moscow, with all its conflagrations, was nearly three centuries before it contained a dwelling-house of brick or stone, and more than two before enclosed with a wall. The reason being that stones of any kind were scarce in the neighbourhood of Moscow, whilst wood was plentiful.

With a palace in the Kremlin the rulers soon set to work to have palaces elsewhere. The one at the Sparrow Hills seems to have been most often resorted to in the early days, but with the advent to Russia of Sophia Paleologus and the introduction of western customs, not only was the single palace found inadequate, but Ivan’s successors all built dwellings in the forest or in villages near Moscow where they could go for sport, or when driven from town by fire, pestilence or revolt.

The most pressing need of the rulers of Moscow when they entered into relations with the west was a hall for entertaining visitors. It was for this purpose that the Granovitaia (chequered) Palace was constructed by the Italian workmen Ivan induced to work in Moscow for the then high wages of ten roubles a month. It was at this period that the Tsars began to evolve a special court etiquette. Previously anyone who could force his way through the throng by whom the princes were surrounded might speak with them. From the first the court etiquette, though not elaborate, was firmly insisted upon. Those who came to the palace had to dismount at some distance from the grand entrance, and approach it on foot. This accounts for the joy of Bowes, the English envoy, who rode right up to the grand entrance before dismounting. Those officers sent to meet foreign envoys had orders not to be the first to dismount; if the envoy knew the etiquette the parties on meeting would sit for hours facing each other, then agree to dismount simultaneously. Herberstein held back after throwing his feet out of the stirrups, so was last to touch earth, and he counts this a gain to his master. Common people and lower nobles were not allowed to pass the Tsar’s residence covered, and “must uncover as soon as it is within view.”

“The city is built of wood and tolerably large, and at a distance appears larger than it really is, for the gardens and spacious courtyards in every house make a great addition to the size of the town, which is again greatly increased by the houses of the smiths and other artificers who use fires. These houses extend in a long row at the end of the city, interspersed with fields and meadows. Moreover not far from the city are some small houses, and the other side of the river some villas where, a few years ago, the Tsar built a new city for his courtiers, who had the privilege of the Tsar to drink at all seasons, which was forbidden to most, who were free to drink only at Eastertide and Christmas. For that reason the Nali, or drinkers, separated themselves from intercourse with the rest of the inhabitants to avoid corrupting them by their mode of living. Not far from the city are some monasteries, which of themselves appear like a great city to persons viewing them from a distance.”—Herberstein.

In addition to the gilded domes of its cathedrals, and the bright red roofs of its palaces, during the reign of Vasili III. Moscow commenced to accumulate other ornamental work quite as wondrous to the pilgrims from other Russian towns. Aleviso of Florence is unusually credited with the work upon the doors and lintels of the old churches within the palace, the porches of the Vossnesenski, Blagovieshchenski, and other Cathedrals within the Kremlin. The gilded and embossed metal work of the doors, the carved and bright-coloured columns and lintels, impressed visitors with the wealth of Moscow since the precious metals were so lavishly employed for merely decorative purposes. There are not many specimens of the work of this period still in existence, such as remain are now for the most part preserved within the palace instead of being, as formerly, exposed to the weather; but practically the whole of the wooden Moscow of the Princes was destroyed by fires during the reign of Ivan IV.

CHAPTER V
Ivan the Terrible

“A right Scythian, full of readie wisdom, cruell, bloudye, mercilesse.”—Horsey.

MOST conspicuous of all the monuments of the past Moscow contains, is the great weird building familiarly known as the church of Vasili Blajenni; as monstrous and impressive is the era that produced it. The half century during which Ivan the Terrible reigned over Muscovy is a unique period in the history of Russia. And not that of Russia only, for in no country at any time have so many and diverse outrages been perpetrated at one man’s command. Disasters resulting from human ambition and folly sully the history of every land, but all histories are spotless in comparison with that of Moscow under its first Tsar—a creature of unparalleled ferocity and inconceivable wickedness.

Ivan was the son of the crafty Vasili Ivanovich in his dotage; of Helena Glinski, a fiery-natured Lithuanian woman, passionate as a Spaniard, reckless as a Tartar. But if his parentage was unpromising his upbringing was worse. He and his mother had many enemies, the members of princely houses in vassalage in Moscow but with aspirations to the throne. These men, mostly relations of the Tsar, were insistent upon the rules of precedence, both for the gratification of their own vanity, and as of possible importance in the event of a Tsar dying without direct heir. For this reason all the Tsars were merciless towards their relatives on their father’s side, and looked for help from the relations of their mother and wife, who had most to gain from the succession being maintained in a direct line.

Helena, as regent, appears to have governed well. She did not marry again, thus the rights of Ivan and his brother Yuri were not endangered by her. Her lover, Kniaz Telepniev, for a time kept at bay the rival factions of the more powerful nobles, and possibly was instrumental in thwarting the plots of the Glinski. At Helena’s command two of her relatives were executed for conspiring against the infant Tsar. She enclosed the Kitai Gorod with a wall of stone; improved the defences of Moscow in other ways, gave the people a new coinage, founded monasteries, built churches, and continued the policy of the rulers of Moscow. Five years after her husband’s death she died suddenly, of poison it is said, and the rumour may be credited.

In 1538, Ivan, then in his eighth year, and his brother Yuri, his junior by eighteen months, were left to the mercies of the most powerful factions about the court. They were neglected; Ivan himself said of this period, “we two were treated as strangers: even as the children of beggars are served. We were ill clothed, cold, and often went hungry.”

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.”

Ivan could wait for his triumph over his associates. He went now to the Volga again, completed the conquest of Kazan, and his troops pressed on as far as Astrakhan, which they took after slight resistance.

In Moscow Ivan kept the grand-dukes, princes, and boyards his nearest relatives; his voievodes, or military leaders, were men of good birth, but with no claim on the succession. Under the administration of Adashef, the outlying parts of the Tsar’s dominions were so effectually governed that when the English ships first appeared on the White Sea, Chancellor was not allowed to trade, or penetrate into the interior of the country, until the permission of the Tsar had been received from Moscow.

In 1560 Anastasia died, and Ivan fretted under the constant surveillance of Sylvester. He was always at hand, entreating the Tsar to shew mercy, and to live straightly. Both Sylvester and Adashef retired within a short time of Anastasia’s death. For bad generalship in Lithuania, Adashef was imprisoned in the fortress of Dorpat, where he died shortly afterwards. Sylvester was ready enough to send the Tsar and his Russian armies to war against the Tartars and infidels; he opposed wars with Livonia, Lithuania and Poland, where Ivan was particularly desirous of extending his dominion.

On the withdrawal of these counsellors again commenced the murders and massacres in which Ivan delighted. Historians divide these into seven cycles; it is a purely arbitrary division—with the exception of the thirteen years 1547-1560, during which he was wedded to Anastasia and engaged in foreign wars, the whole of his long reign was given to terrorising his subjects.

Obolenski was the first noble killed by Ivan himself; Repnin was murdered whilst at his devotions in church; another was slain simply because he remonstrated with the Tsar for such a display of cruelty. Ivan always used the hour of victory to exterminate foes, and he now relentlessly hunted down all his past advisers and their friends.

He was determined on absolute supremacy.

“To shew his soveraintie over the lives of his subjects, Ivan in his walks, if he disliked the face or person of any man he met by the way, or that looked at him, would command his head to be struck off. There and then the thing was done, and the head cast before him.”

Dismayed, some of his nobles fled to the west; among them was Kniaz Kourbski, who, not content simply to take service under Sigismund, acquainted the Tsar by letter with the fact. Kniaz Vasili Chibanov was the bearer. Ivan received him on the Krasnœ Kriltso, and there, with his sharp staff, pinned to the floor the foot of Chibanov, who never stirred a muscle during the whole time the long letter was read aloud. Then Chibanov was put to the torture, to obtain particulars of the flight of Kourbski, and the names of his partisans in Moscow; but Chibanov confessed not a word, and in the midst of the most horrible torment praised his master, and counted it a joy to suffer thus for him.

Generally Ivan studied to keep on good terms with the common people—whom he feared; by them he was worshipped. Macarius, the metropolitan, complained that “He who blasphemes his maker, meets with forgiveness amongst men, he who reviles the Tsar is sure to lose his head.” Ivan chose as his companions the worst people whom he could find. At one time he withdrew from Moscow, taking umbrage at the prelates, still too powerful to be touched. The people clamoured for his return.

“The Tsar has forsaken us: we are lost, who will now defend us against the enemy? What are sheep without the shepherd? Let him punish all who deserve it: has he not the power over life and death? The state cannot endure without its head, and we will not acknowledge any other than he whom God has given us.”

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.

These excursions of Ivan and his men into distant parts of his dominions afforded the Muscovites some respite from his attentions. The English then there were much impressed by the cruelties of Ivan, though themselves escaping. Jerom Horsey thus describes Ivan’s invasion of Novgorod:—

“O the lamentable outcries and cruel slaughters! The drownings and burnings, the ravishing of women and maids, stripping them naked without mercy or regard of the frozen weather, tying and binding them by three and four together at their horses’ tails: dragging them, some alive, some dead, all bloodying the ways and streets, lying full of carcases of the aged men, women and infants! Thus were infinite numbers of the fairest people in the world dragged into Muscovy.”

With the spoil brought from Novgorod was the “Great Bell of Novgorod” which had so often called its burghers to assemble for the defence of the town. Ivan was determined that the tocsin should never again be heard over the fallen city. The bell he caused to be hanged in the turret on the Kremlin wall near the Spasski Gate, where for long it was used as the alarm bell of Moscow, but subsequently served as metal when the great bell in Ivan Veliki was recast.

Shortly after his return from Novgorod he entered upon his fourth cycle of massacres. The prisoners were executed in batches before the Spasski Gate. Horsey was instrumental in getting the lives of many spared, and they were settled in a suburb of Moscow where they lived at peace with the citizens but were still subject to attacks from the öpritchniks. Ivan found other traitors among the boyards and princes, for his favourites of to-day were the victims of the morrow.

“On July 25, in the middle of the market-place, eighteen scaffolds were erected, a number of instruments of torture were fixed in position, a large stack of wood was lighted, and over it an enormous cauldron of water was placed. Seeing these terrible preparations, the people hurried away and hid themselves wherever they could, abandoning their opened shops, their goods and their money. Soon the place was void but for the band of öpritchniks gathered round the gibbets, and the blazing fire. Then was heard the sound of drums: the Tsar appeared on horseback, accompanied by his dutiful son, the boyards, some princes, and quite a legion of hangmen. Behind these came some hundreds of the condemned, many like spectres; others torn, bleeding, and so feeble they scarce could walk. Ivan halted near the scaffolds and looked around, then at once commanded the öpritchniks to find where the people were and drag them into the light of day. In his impatience he even himself ran about here and there, calling the Muscovites to come forward and see the spectacle he had prepared for them, promising all who came safety and pardon. The inhabitants, fearing to disobey, crept out of their hiding-places, and, trembling with fright, stood round the scaffold. Some having climbed on to the walls, and even showing themselves on the roofs, Ivan shouted: ‘People, ye are about to witness executions and a massacre, but these are traitors whom I thus punish. Answer me: Is this just?’ And on all sides the people shouted approval. ‘Long live our glorious King! Down with traitors! Goiesi, Goida!’

“Ivan separated 180 of the prisoners from the crowd and pardoned them. Then the first Clerk of the Council unrolled a scroll and called upon the condemned to answer. The first to be brought before him was Viskovati, and to him he read out: ‘Ivan Mikhailovich, formerly a Counsellor of State, thou hast been found faithless to his Imperial Highness. Thou hast written to the King Sigismund offering him Novgorod: there thy first crime!’ He paused to strike Viskovati on the head, then continued reading: ‘And this thy second crime, not less heinous than thy first, O ungrateful and perfidious one! Thou hast written to the Sultan of Turkey, that he may take Astrakhan and Kazan,’ whereupon he struck the condemned wretch twice, and continued: ‘Also thou hast called upon the Khan of the Krim Tartars to enter and devastate Russia: this thy third crime.’ Viskovati called God to witness that he was innocent, that he had always served faithfully his Tsar and his country: ‘My earthly judges will not recognise the truth; but the Heavenly Judge knows my innocence! Thou also, O Prince, thou wilt recognise it before that tribunal on high!’ Here the executioners interrupted, gagging him. He was then suspended, head downwards, his clothes torn off”, and, Maluta Skutarov, the first to dismount from his horse and lead the attack, cut off an ear, then, little by little, his body was hacked to pieces.

“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.

In 1571 Ivan’s voievodes failed him. They were unable, or unwilling, to oppose the Tartar horde and it reached Moscow. There the enemy pillaged and burnt the town, destroying the stores, houses and buildings outside the Kremlin. The town suffered worse than in the great conflagrations of 1547, but the Tartars, satisfied with the spoil, withdrew. They subsequently sent envoys to Ivan and these were at once imprisoned. Kept in dark rooms, ill-treated, almost starved,—they endured; made light of the hardships; scorned their guardians. At last an audience was granted them.

“The Ambassador enters Ivan’s presence; his followers kept back in a space with grates of iron between the Emperor and them; at which the ambassador chafes with a hellish, hollow voice, looking fierce and grimly. Four captains of the guard bring him near the Emperor’s seat. Himself, a most ugly creature, without reverence, thunders out, says,—His master and lord, Devlet Geray, great Emperor of all the Kingdoms and Kams the sun did spread his beams over, sent to him Ivan Vasilievich, his vassal, and Grand Duke over Russia by his permission, to know how he did like the scourge of his displeasure by sword, fire and famine? Had sent him for remedy (pulling out a foul, rusty knife) to cut his throat withal.” They hasted him forth from the room, and would have taken off his gown and cap, but he and his company strove with them so stoutly. The Emperor fell into such an agony; sent for his ghostly father; tore his own hair and beard for madness! Then sent away the ambassador with this message, “Tell the miscreant and unbeliever, thy master, it is not he, it is for my sins, and the sins of my people against my God and Christ. He it is that hath given him, a limb of Satan, the power and opportunity to be the instrument of my rebuke, by whose pleasure and grace I doubt not of revenge, and to make him my vassal ere long be.” The Tartar answered, “He would not do him so much service as to do any such message for him.”—Horsey.

Ivan had to send his own emissaries to the Tartars and the Khan kept them imprisoned seven years, and in other ways showed his contempt for the ruler of Moscow. But for Ivan’s newly-found friends the English, his enemies in east and west would have conquered him. The English, much to the disgust of Swedes and Poles, supplied Ivan with artillery and small arms; improved engines of war, much gunpowder, and showed his men how to use them—Russians are not slow to learn.

In 1548 Ivan sent John Schlitte to Germany to enlist foreign artisans for his service. Attracted by the high remuneration offered, a hundred were willing to accompany Schlitte back to Moscow, but the Governments, anticipating danger to their territory if the Russ became enlightened, refused permission. Only a few determined stragglers reached Russian territory. The first printers in Russia were encouraged for a time, then, for their own safety, had hurriedly to seek exile.

For Moscow Ivan did little: twice during his reign the town was destroyed by fire. After the first he built himself a new palace of wood within the Kremlin; later he had another constructed outside, between the Nikitskaia and the Arbat. For a long time he lived in neither, preferring a wretched dwelling in a far off village, whence he believed he could, at need, escape unobserved to England if any of his subjects took up arms against him.

The monument of his reign is the church in the Grand Place. Dedicated to the “Intercession of the Holy Virgin,” it was built at Ivan’s command, and at the expense of Kazan, to commemorate the conquest of that town, which fell on the first of October 1552. Commenced in 1553, it was completed six years later and consecrated by the Metropolitan Macarius on the day of its patron saint.

The name of its architect is unknown. Tradition asserts that Ivan, to make sure that this church should be “the crowning effort of his wonderful genius,” put out his eyes. There is no evidence in support of this story, and it is unlikely that Ivan would have done a thing so usual.

Many writers have asserted that this fantastic edifice is a mixture of the Gothic, Moorish, Indian, Byzantine and other styles of architecture. As a matter of fact it is but an exaggeration of the Russian style, an agglomeration of domes, towers and spires, one or other of which may be found on many buildings in “wooden Russia.” In the chapter on “Ecclesiastical Moscow” the reader will find further information on this point. It appears to embody the salient features of many styles, eastern and western, and the whole, if neither beautiful nor magnificent is strikingly imposing and original. Unlike other Russian churches the belfry instead of being at the west end, is at the east. Nine of its chapels are each surmounted by a lofty roof differing from the others.

The central one, that dedicated to the Virgin, has a high tower and wonderful spire, the paintings on its internal converging sides adding to its extravagant proportions. The other eight chapels on this floor surround the spire and are covered with the usual arched vault supporting longer or shorter cylindrical towers, surmounted with cupolas of different forms and sizes. One, has apparently large facets; another bristles like the back of a hedgehog; a third bears closest resemblance to a pine-apple, a fourth to a melon; a fifth is in folds, another has spiral gonflements—none are plain. A covered gallery extends from north to south, with roofed and spired stairways leading up to the church level, and a narrow passage and outside wall enclose the remaining chapels. The quaint belfry with its Russo-Gothic spire and bright roofing, being unlike aught else, is in keeping with the general design. Outside, the central dome is brightly gilt, the others are painted in gaudy colours, and the whole of the exterior is decorated with crude patterns in strong contrast. Its design is bizarre; its colour is motley; the two both harmonise and contrast—the whole fascinates. It is at once both a nightmare and a revelation. Like an impressionist’s picture it rivets attention by apparent strength and seeming originality. It cannot be forgotten, yet it repels by its egregious fatuity. It is the over-inflated frog at the instant of explosion. It is not even known by its correct name: covering the remains of a

mendicant monk “idiotic for Christ’s sake,” its familiar appellation, “Blessed Willie,” is derived from him. He it was who so often interposed his person between the Tsar and the objects of his wrath. He upbraided Ivan; threatened him with all manner of disasters, but neither Ivan nor his opritchniks ever hurt the naked body of the old beggar. He used to address the Tsar familiarly, “Ivashka” (Bad Jacky); when the Tsar offered him money he let it fall to the floor, blew on his fingers, said the coins burned, and asked Ivan why he had his gold from hell. Then he would tell Ivan that on his forehead were already growing the horns of a goat—that he was becoming a devil really—then hold him up to the ridicule of the court and the people—and Ivan, enraged, dared not strike him down himself or order anyone to do so. Now, the wonderful monument of Ivan’s time is called by the name of the man he feared; it is he the orthodox remember; it is his church; they honour and revere him. Later another popular prophet, “Ivan the Idiot” was buried there by order of the Tsar Theodore: his chapel adjoins that of “Blessed Willie,” below the level of the church itself at the east end.

The church has not much history; the Poles plundered it, Napoleon ordered his generals to “Destroy that Mosque”—instead they quartered themselves there. It has been many times repaired; was reconsecrated in 1812 and remains, what it is, a striking memorial of a fearful era.

As a place of worship it is now but little used. Its architecture is not of the kind to inspire lofty thoughts, or draw any nearer to God. Its associations are all unpleasant, reminiscent of the excesses of Ivan, the weaknesses of his immediate successors. Worse, it lacks sincerity: intuitively one knows that such a building cannot shelter truth or engender hope. To uncover at its portal seems a mockery; to connect it with aught that is pure and Holy, a rank blasphemy.

Glittering in bright sunlight, gay with colour, resplendent with reflections from a glorious sky, it seems only like a kaleidoscopic flash on a variegated canvas. To know Vasili Blajenni, the visitor should walk round it in the dusk of the evening, in the gloom of a winter’s day, or, in summer, in that half-light of midnight that there does duty for darkness. Standing in the shadow of the Kremlin wall, on soil saturated fathoms deep with the blood of innocent martyrs, examine the building closely and call to memory the people by whom and for whom it was produced. Then and then only may the conception of this fungus-like excrescence seem possible, and Vasili Blajenni stand revealed as an expression of inordinate vanity, uncontrolled passion, insatiate lust. Like attributes without a soul—weird, monstrous, horrible. No fitting memorial of any man, yet not out of character with what is known of him they called Ivan the Terrible.

The clergy alone possessed any power besides the Tsar; but the Church was unable to coerce him or to save the people. Obedience to those in power it had inculcated so long and thoroughly that the Russians never attempted reprisals or lifted a hand against the Tsar. Even a voievod, speaking to Ivan, had his ears sliced off there and then by the Tsar himself, and he not only bore it patiently, but thanked the Tsar for his attention. The people, debased, servile, frightened, could not help the Church—and soon the clergy could not help themselves. Ivan, who was fond of the semblance of justice, after his expedition north appointed a baptized Tartar, one Simeon Bekbulatov, to be Tsar in his place, then himself abdicated. But he took care to make Simeon do as he wished, and he kept the power. The people obeyed Simeon, to a certain extent, but the Tsar’s chief object in this was to legalise his seizure of ecclesiastical revenues. Simeon made certain agreements, but not having made those in force, which had been recognised by Ivan, he abrogated them. Then Ivan dismissed Simeon amidst the thanksgiving and rejoicing of his people, and with tears in his own eyes, the arch-hypocrite again took his seat on the throne. But the old agreements were no longer in force; then Ivan declared null and void certain acts of Simeon, and so between the two, secured all the Church properties he wanted, and deprived the clergy of many privileges. Ivan was a great chess-player; his strategy as Tsar shows how his knowledge of the game benefited him.

Ivan put to death his cousin Vladimir for no crime; his mother Euphrosyne, when living in seclusion in a convent, he dragged forth and drowned in the Cheksna. His own sister-in-law, the widow of his early playmate Yuri, was also killed for no other reason than in the seclusion of the convent she had shed tears over the victims of the despot’s fury.

The boyard Rostevski, after imprisonment, was marched naked in very cold weather until the Volga was reached. His guards said that there they must water their horses. “Ah,” said Rostevski, “full well I know I have to drink of that water too,” and straightway he went to his death.

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.

His people all shrank from him: the merchants hid their goods if he, or any of his spies, were in their neighbourhood; none dared be counted rich. He robbed any and all. Even the English merchants, whose good esteem he prized, were forced to furnish him with what he wished, on credit, and were never paid. They dared not offer their wares to any, unless he had first been afforded an opportunity to purchase—at his own price.

His palace at Alexandrovski was a wondrous building; all spires, domes, quaint gables, and corridors—as unlike all other palaces as Vasili Blajenni is unlike other churches. Of his enormities there, none may write. After his death, it was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.

He was rough, uncouth, unfeeling. He emptied scalding soup over one of his favourites and laughed at the sufferer’s contortions. Taking offence at a remark of one of his jesters, he ran his knife into the little fellow’s chest; then called a doctor, telling him he had used his fool roughly. The doctor told him the man was dead. Ivan, remarking that he was a poor jester after all, went away to his revels.

A straightforward old boyard, Morozof, a hard fighter and an upholder of the rights of his order, for disputing with the favoured Boris Godunov about precedence, was exiled. After some years he was again summoned to court, and Ivan made of him a buffoon. Count Alexis Tolstoi uses the story in his romance “Prince Serebrenni.”

“ ‘Yes, the Boyard is old in years but young in spirit. He loves a joke—so do I in the hours not devoted to prayers or my affairs of state. But since I killed that foolish jester, no one knows how to amuse me. I see that the Boyard Morozof wants the post. I have promised to show him a favour—I name him my chief jester! Bring the cap and bells! Put them on the Boyard.’ The muscles of the Tsar’s face worked sharply, his voice was unchanged.

“Morozof was thunder-struck: he could not believe his ears. He looked more terrible even than the Tsar. When Gresnoi brought the cloak, with its tinkling bells, Morozof pushed him aside. ‘Stand back! Do not dare, outcast, to touch Boyard Morozof! Your fathers cleaned out my ancestor’s kennels. You leave me alone! Tsar, withdraw your order. Let me be put to death. With my head you can do as you will. You may not touch my honour!’

“Ivan looked round at the opritchniks. ‘You see I am right in saying that the Boyard will have his joke. I have no right to promote him to the office of jester, eh?’

“ ‘Tsar, I implore you to withdraw your words. Before you were born I fought for your father with Simski against the Cheremiss; with Odoevski and Mstislavski drove back the Krim-Tartars, and chased the Tartars away from Moscow. I defended you when a child; fought for your rights and the rights of your mother. I prized only mine honour; that has always remained unstained. Will you mock the grey hairs of a faithful servant? Behead me rather—if you will.’

“ ‘Your foolish words show that you are well fitted for a jester. Put on the cloak! And you fellows, help him. He is used to be waited upon.’

“The opritchniks put on the fool’s cloak, the parti-coloured cap, and retreating, bowed low before him. ‘Now amuse us as did the late jester!’ said their leader.

“Morozof was resolute. ‘I accept the new post, to which the Tsar has appointed me. It was not fit for Boyard Morozof to sit at table with a Godunov—but the court fool may keep company even with such as the Basmanovs. Make way for the new jester, and listen, all of you, how he will amuse Ivan Vasilievich!’ He made a gesture of command: the opritchniks stood aside, and with his bells tinkling, the fine old man marched up the room and seated himself on the stool before the Tsar, but with such dignity that he seemed to be wearing the royal purple instead of the motley of the court fool.

“ ‘How shall I amuse you, Tsar?’ and putting his elbows on the table, he leant forward and looked directly into the eyes of his sovereign. ‘It is not easy to find a fresh diversion for you; there have been so many jests in Russia since you began to reign. You rode your horse over the helpless in the streets once-upon-a-time; you have thrown your companions to dogs, you poured burning pitch over the heads of those who humbly petitioned you! But those were childish freaks. You soon tired of such simple cruelties. You began to imprison your nobles, in order to fill your rooms with their wives and daughters, but of this also you have tired. You next chose your most faithful servants for the torture; then you found it wearied you to mock the people and the nobles, so you began to scoff at the Church of God. You picked out the lowest rabble, decked them out as monks, and yourself became the abbot! In daylight you commit murders; at night sing psalms! Your favourite amusement, this! None had thought of it before. You are covered with blood, yet you chant and ring the holy bells and would like to perform the mass. What else shall I say to amuse you, Tsar? This: whilst you are masquerading thus with your opritchniks, wallowing in blood, Sigismund with his Poles will fall on you in the west, and from the east will come the Khan, and you will have left none alive to defend Moscow. The holy churches of God will be entered and burned by the infidel, all the holy relics will be taken: you,—you—the Tsar of all the Russias, will have to kneel at the feet of the Khan, and ask leave to kiss his stirrup!’ Morozof ceased. None dared interrupt; all held their breath in agonising suspense. Ivan, pale, with flashing eyes, and foaming with rage, listened to all attentively, bent forward, as though fearing to lose a single word. Morozof gazed proudly around him. ‘Do you want me to divert you further, Tsar? I will. One faithful subject, of high birth, still remained to you. You had not yet thought of killing him, because—perhaps—perhaps you feared the anger of God; and perhaps only because you could think of no torture or infamous death worthy of him. He lived in disgrace far from you; you exiled him; you might have forgotten him—but you never forget, do you, Tsar? You sent your cursed favourite, Viasemski, to burn his house and carry off his wife. When he came to you for redress for these wrongs, you sent him to combat for the right, in the hope that your young courtier would kill the old boyard. God did not allow you that joy, Tsar. He gave the other the victory. What did you do then, Tsar?’ the bells on the cap tinkled as the old man’s head shook with his emotion. ‘Why, then you dishonoured him by an unheard-of outrage. Then, Tsar,’ he pushed back the table in his indignation, and sprang to his feet—‘then you ordered the boyard, Morozof, to wear the fool’s cap! You forced the man, who had saved Tula and Moscow, to play the fool to amuse you and your idle courtiers!’

“The look of the old warrior was fierce; the absurdity of his dress disappeared. His eyes flashed fire, his white beard fell on a chest scarred with many wounds now hidden beneath a jester’s cloak. So much dignity was there in him that by his side the Tsar looked mean.

“Tsar, your new fool stands before you. Listen to his last jest. While you live the people dare not speak, but when your hateful reign is over your name will be cursed from generation to generation, until, on the day of judgment, the hundreds and thousands you have murdered—men, women and little children, all of whom you have tortured and killed, all will stand before God appealing against you, their murderer. On that dreadful day I, too, shall appear in this same dress before the Great Judge, and will ask for that honour you took from me on earth. You will have no body-guard then to defend you; the Judge will hear us, and you will go into that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’

“Casting a disdainful look upon the courtiers, Morozof turned round and slowly withdrew. None dared to stop him. He passed through the hall with great dignity, and not until the jingle of his bells ceased did any speak.”—Alexis Tolstoi.

His son, the Tsarevich Ivan, wished to lead an army against his father’s enemies in Lithuania. In this offer the jealous Tsar saw an attempt to gain popularity. He turned on Ivan savagely and struck him repeatedly with the iron-shod “sceptre” he always carried; the last blow knocked the young man senseless. He fell to the ground, and the Tsar, now frightened, did his utmost to save him, but he was injured too severely and died four days later.

There still exists in the monastery of St Cyril, Moscow, a synodal letter, in which are specified a number of victims for whom Ivan solicited the prayers of the Church. The souls of 3,470 in all are to be prayed for; 986 of these are mentioned by name, the others are cited as—“with his wife,” “with sons,” “with wife and children,” “Kazarim Dubrovski and his two sons and the ten men who came to their defence,” “twenty men of the village of Kolomensko,” “eighty of Matveche,” “Remember, Lord, the souls of thy servants to the number of 1,505 Novgorodians.”

In the number of wives recognised by the Church as more or less legitimately joined with him he beat Henry VIII. by only one, but in the number of mistresses he can be compared with Solomon alone. Anastasia Romanof died in 1560; in the same year he married Mary Tangrak, either a Cheremiss or Tartar. His next wife was chosen out of all the most eligible maids in Russia. Her name was Marfa Sabakina of Novgorod. The marriage took place on October 28, 1571, and on November 13 of the same year she died. Her brother, Michael, the Tsar impaled shortly afterwards. Ivan’s marriage with Natalia Bulkatov was not recognised by the Church. Anna Koltoski he took next, but he forced her into a nunnery later, where she lived until 1626. Anna Vasilichekov and one Mstislavski succeeded, but only one was recognised,—which one is disputed. Vassilissa Melentief, a great beauty, was his next choice, but the Church recognised only Maria Nagoi, the mother of the murdered Dmitri, whom he married in 1580. When but a few months wed, he informed Queen Elizabeth that he would put aside his wife, who was shortly to become a mother, if he could find a suitable partner for himself in England. Poor Lady Mary Hastings, learning something of his character, begged her sovereign not to mate her with such a barbarian. His harem was that of a Turk.

He was prematurely worn out with his excesses. He could obtain little peace. Superstitious, he sent for wizards and prognosticators; Finns who certainly foretold the day, if not the hour, of his death. The appearance of a comet greatly terrified him—the once mighty Tsar lost his strength. Like Herod of old he died a fearful death, and he left his country in a worse plight than he found it.

He was received into the Church before his demise, but he is officially known as Yoanna and familiarly as “Groznoi” (the Terrible). His evil deeds are forgotten by the people, whilst the enrichment of his country by others of his day is counted to his credit. He was the first “Tsar” of Russia, and not in name only; he was its first ruler to become an absolute autocrat.

It is a fashion of this humanitarian age to make allowances for the harsh deeds of those who lived in ruder times, and in this nineteenth century even Ivan the Terrible has found apologists. His atrocities, his joy in the perpetration of the cruellest tortures on the innocent, all his wickednesses are admitted; but they call his lust by a Greek name and say he is to be pitied rather than condemned. Yet some there must be even now, who, when they read that Ivan always went to the torture rooms with joy and came away from its fiendish practices invigorated, refreshed and gay, will rightly regard him with loathing and horror. Not only is his character without a redeeming trait, but his nature is so fiendish and foul that the student may read long and investigate very closely before making sure that Ivan was human. His lusts had not the saving grace of humour; his fear even was sulphurous. Neither circumstances nor events either mitigate or condone his cruelties. Throughout his life he was actuated by one impulse only, to gratify and preserve himself. Those who believe that the occasion makes the man must feel that the fifty-years rule of this despot upsets that theory. Never was there such need for a Cromwell—the country could not produce a man, much less a liberator. Doubtless the action of previous rulers, the centuries of thraldom to Tartars, the thorough teaching of the Christian doctrine of obedience to rulers, contributed to the servility of the people. One of his tortured victims, it is true, did try to assault him, but the wretch was at once killed by the watchful Tsarevich, and in future Ivan ran no such risks. Prelates rebuked him and suffered; his victims suffered and forgave him—none tried to free themselves or help others. In all this dreary time only one man appears to have acted worthily. The Englishman, Jerom Horsey, exerted all the influence he possessed on behalf of Ivan’s prisoners. The services he rendered deserve a memorial; instead he received the condemnation of the Russia Company, in whose employ he was, and the encomiums and admiration of the Tsar whom he loathed and despised.

The magnitude and multitude of his crimes place Ivan far beyond other tyrants of his class. It is reassuring to know that in no other country and at no other time would his rule be permitted. The mere possibility of a recurrence of such a time of terror would determine every thinking being to die childless. The spirit of freedom renders the ascendency or continuance of his like impossible—but in mediæval Moscow the spirit of freedom had no place.

CHAPTER VI
The Troublous Times

“But war has spread its terrors o’er thee,
And thou hast been in ashes laid:
Thy throne seemed tottering then before thee,
Thy sceptre feeble as thy blade.”—Dmitriev.

“Yea, one is full out as villainous as the other.”
W. Russell—A Bloudie and Tragicke Massacre.

BORIS GODUNOV was the most powerful and sagacious of the boyards spared by Ivan the “Terrible”; he was best fitted to direct the policy of the government, and later the people looked to him as the only ruler possible. A man who could satisfy Ivan, yet take no part in his orgies, who could keep the goodwill of the foreign residents, yet be beloved of the Muscovites, must have possessed abilities of no mean order. Boris was a great man to whom historians have done scant justice. He is described as inordinately ambitious and accused of unscrupulousness in his methods, but the court in which he was schooled may be adduced in extenuation of his crimes, whilst ambition, an undesirable quality for a subject to possess, is a laudable virtue in monarchs. It was his misfortune not to have been born in the purple—his contemporaries and the historians have counted this a fault, but it is too late to blame him for acting as a king when he was by birth a simple noble.

Boris Godunov, as brother of the Tsar’s wife, had a recognised position apart from the favour the Tsar’s father had shown him. The relatives of the Tsarina were always counted less dangerous to the dynasty than were the Tsar’s blood relations, and their influence at Court was greater than their precedence warranted. Theodore was the opposite of his father, unintelligent, feeble-willed, incompetent, he thrust greatness upon Boris Godunov, who saved Moscow. At that time the Tsar held territory in Europe larger than that ruled by any of his contemporaries; the conquests of Yermak in Asia brought as much more under his dominion. Enemies, active, watchful, virulent, were ever ready to harass its rulers. Poles and Swedes expected Moscow sooner or later, to fall to them, and lost no opportunity to effect the overthrow of the Russians. Tartars and others kept up predatory wars and, within the empire, towns and districts, devastated by the wanton cruelties of Ivan, were anxious to get back their independence. There were no men able to rule. Ivan had put to death those brave enough and independent enough to assert authority; what was worse for Russia, he had driven into exile competent and influential nobles, who, maddened by his persecutions, became enemies of their fatherland and plotted with foreign sovereigns against the state.

To govern was difficult; to preserve the empire intact, still more so; further aggrandisement almost impossible with the conditions then prevailing. Theodore left everything to the council,—duma, consisting of boyards whom Godunov held in the hollow of his hand. From his brother-in-law he obtained special titles and special powers; he became viceroy of immense territories, and could put 100,000 armed men into the field at need. He was practically regent and lacked nothing that was royal but the title. When the Shooiskis, the Belskis, the Mstislavskis and others did not please him he forced them from power. Mstislavski had to become a monk; Shooiski, who tried to get together a party among the merchants, was banished to a distant town; Dionysius, the metropolitan, was deposed, and a nominee of Godunov’s succeeded to the primacy of the church. When, in 1586, Batory, King of Lithuania died, Boris Godunov put forward Theodore as candidate for the crown of Poland. But the Poles would have no ruler who belonged to the eastern church. Moreover, they feared the Muscovites would join Poland to Muscovy like a sleeve to a coat; but the claim proved that Russia was still a power with which the west would have to reckon. Boris, who had always been friendly with the English, obtained for Theodore the support of England against Danes and Swedes; he quite won over Queen Elizabeth to the side of the young Tsar and, in many ways, as Grand High Chancellor advanced the interests of his sovereign and his country.

In Moscow he acted intelligently. The middle town, the Bielo-Gorod or free town, between the Kitai Gorod and the present boulevards was enclosed with a wall of stone, having twenty-eight towers and nine gates. The last gate, that on the Arbat, was razed in 1792, the wall having been earlier demolished and its site utilised for the present existing boulevards. Its style was that of the wall around the Donskoi Monastery built in 1591 to commemorate the victory of the Muscovites under Mstislavski against 150,000 Krim-Tartars advancing on the city under the leadership of the Khan Kazi Ghiree. Another building of Godunov’s is the smaller “Golden Palace” in the Terem of the Kremlin, which was erected for the accommodation of the Tsaritsa Irene. Many bells were cast, and some cannon including the monstrous Tsar Pushka—still within the Kremlin—which bears a

portrait of Theodore on horseback on its reinforcement. Theodore lived in regal state: his household numbered over 1000, and he entertained foreign ambassadors with even greater pomp and magnificence than his predecessors. Not only were these guests provided with a fitting residence and a large suit, but it was not uncommon for as many as a hundred and fifty dinners to be sent daily from the Tsar’s kitchen for their entertainment.

Ivan’s youngest son, Dmitri, with his mother Maria, and her relatives, the Nagois, were domiciled in Uglitch by the order of Boris; whilst there in 1581, about the period of the Tartar invasion, young Dmitri was murdered—at Boris Godunov’s instigation it is said. Jerom Horsey, who was in Uglitch at the time, states that he was aroused late at night, the news given him, and his aid requested on behalf of Dmitri’s mother believed to be poisoned. Horsey gave the messenger the small vial of sallet oil the Queen (Elizabeth) had given him as a specific against all poisons and ills. An inquiry was ordered when Boris Godunov was suspected of having instigated the crime, and as a result of the investigation made by Shooiski it was declared that the boy cut his own throat and that the Nagois and citizens of Uglitch had put to death innocent men as murderers, whereupon, the incredible finding being believed, an effort was made to exterminate the Nagois, and Uglitch was almost depopulated.

There can be no doubt that Dmitri was murdered when six years old, but it is not so clear at whose instigation the deed was done. Giles Fletcher states that the child “resembled his father in delight of blood,” and it may be that evidence of his cruel propensities induced some sufferer from Ivan’s tyranny to wreak vengeance on the son in hope of saving a generation to come from such suffering as the past had endured. It may be that Boris Godunov plotted for his removal, but it is known that Boris was anxious for Theodore to have a son to succeed to the throne, and, probably, had then little intention of securing it for himself. One of the complaints made by the Russia Company against Jerom Horsey was in connection with a wrongly interpreted order he executed on behalf of Boris Godunov who wished a “wise woman” sent out from England to doctor the Tsaritsa, and the company instead sent out a midwife.

To conciliate the small landowners a decree was issued in 1597 forbidding peasants to leave the land and thus serfdom was established. Some efforts had been made in former centuries to restrict the migrations of a people, nomadic by habit, still accustomed to change masters frequently by moving from one estate to another at seed time and harvest. The tendency of the powerful was to increase the size of their holdings and to augment their retainers by enticing labourers from smaller estates. To check this the husbandman was attached to the soil as the serf of the estate.

As statesmanlike, and less objectionable, was the appointment of a patriarch to win over the clergy. Jeremiah, patriarch of Constantinople, was banished by the Turks and sought refuge in Rome. The Pope sent him to Moscow, hoping that the chief of their own church would influence the Russians to forward the amalgamation of the Greek and Roman churches. If not successful in this, it was hoped that the recountal of the patriarch’s sufferings and indignities at the hands of infidels, might induce the Romans to make a league with Spain against the Turks. According to Giles Fletcher the Pope’s emissaries did nothing more than inveigh against England; but with the destruction of the Spanish Armada all conceit of a Russo-Spanish league vanished. Godunov profited by Jeremiah’s stay in Moscow. He induced him to consecrate the Metropolitan Job, patriarch of Moscow, and to this patriarchate that of Constantinople was subsequently added. Thus Moscow became indisputably the head of the Orthodox Church, by direct apostolic succession.

The Tsar fell ill in 1597 and died in the Kremlin the following year, and his widow then at once retired to the Novo Devichi convent mourning her bereavement and blaming herself that through her the sovereign race had perished, for her only child, Theodosia, died in 1592, when but ten months old.

The enmity the reigning princes had shown their own kindred, produced the unexpected result that there were now no legal heirs to the throne; the line of which Andrew Bogoloobski Dolgoruki was the founder, was extinct. The Tsar Theodore when on his death-bed said that God would provide the next Tsar, and refused to nominate a successor. The States’ Council convened for the purpose of appointing a ruler, unanimously chose Boris Godunov. It was impossible that the throne could escape him. He hung back, wishful to have an expression of the desire of the people of Moscow, as well as of the delegates. The people required him. They went to the Novo Devichi convent, whither he had gone, begged him to accept the position to which he had been appointed; his sister “blessed him for the throne,” and with great show of reluctance, he at last consented. In due course he was crowned; reigned wisely and well, but was not liked. A chronicler has it that “he presented to the poor in a vase of gold the blood of the innocents, he fed them with unholy alms.”

Those of his subjects who remembered the tyranny of Ivan should have blessed their elected ruler. They could not forget his Tartar origin: he was not of royal descent, was no Tsar. Nor could he win popularity. His first act was to conclude an honourable peace with Kazi Ghiree and the invading Tartars; his policy was to avoid war, that “there might be neither widows nor orphans of his making.”

Horsey wrote of him:—

“He is nowe become a Prince of subjects, and not of slaves, kept within duty and loyalty by love and not by feare and tyranny. He is comely of stature, of countenance well-favoured and majesticalle withal; affable in behaviour and yet of great courage, wyse, politick, grave; merciful, a lover of virtue and goodness, a hater of wicked men, and a severe punisher of injustice. In summa, he is a most rare prince as ever reigned over these people as any I have ever read of in their chronicles, which are of great antiquity.”

In 1601 Moscow was in a state of famine, the like of which it had never known. In a short time 3 roubles would not buy as much food as 15 copecks had done formerly. Driven wild by hunger the Muscovites committed fearful atrocities. Men were entrapped, killed and eaten. It is said that some mothers killed and ate their own children; pies of human flesh were sold openly; many thousand corpses remained unburied in the streets; chroniclers state that half a million perished of famine and disease. To alleviate some of the misery, Boris caused the granaries and stores to be burst open, and the food avarice withheld sold at normal prices.

Boris built two new palaces of stone within the Kremlin; had made a map of the Russian dominions, and a plan of Moscow. To find employment for the poor he caused the belfry tower of Ivan Veliki to be constructed, and did his utmost to win the love of the citizens. He had to combat treason and intrigue; his reprisals were severe, but the victims suffered in secret.