Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/110

Rh off the bell which summoned the citizens. Thus fell the last of the Slavonic republics. Ryazan was next added to the Muscovite territory. The prince, being accused of having contracted an alliance with the khan of the Crimea, fled to Lithuania, where he died in obscurity. Nov- gorod Severski was annexed soon after, and by a war with Sigismund I. Basil got back Smolensk. He was doomed, however, to suffer from an invasion of the Mongols of the Crimea, and is said to have signed a humiliating treaty to save his capital, whereby he acknowledged himself the tributary of the khan. Meanwhile at home Basil exercised absolute authority ; Russia now exhibited the spectacle of an Asiatic despotism. He entered into negotiations with many foreign princes. Herberstein, the German ambassador, who has left us such an interesting account of the Russia of this time, has told us of the great splendour of his court. We now come to an IV. the reign of the terrible Ivan, who has left his name he written in blood upon the annals of Russia, and ruled for tle) - the long period of fifty-one years (1533-1584). It was a fortunate thing for the aggrandizement of the empire that, instead of having a succession of weak sovereigns, who only ruled a short time, it had three such vigorous potentates as Ivan III., Basil, and Ivan IV., whose united reigns extended over a hundred and twenty-two years. The grand-duke Basil at his death left two sons, Ivan and Yuri, under the guardianship of his second wife Helen Glinska. She had come into Russia from Lithuania, her family having been proscribed by the Polish king Alexander on the accusation of having plotted against his life. The grand-duchess ruled with great ability, but died in 1538, having been, as is supposed, poisoned. The two young princes then became the victims of the intrigues of the chief families, especially those of Shuiski and Belski. Ivan early gave proof of a vigorous understanding, whereas his younger brother Yuri appears to have been half-witted. In 1543, when only in his thirteenth year, Ivan determined to emancipate himself from the galling yoke of the boiars, and by a kind of coup d'etat threw off their tutelage, and caused Shuiski to be torn to pieces by dogs. After this, for some time, he was under the influence of his maternal relations. In January 1547 Ivan was crowned by the metropolitan Macarius, and took the title of czar, or tsar, a Slavonic form of the Latin Cresar. He soon afterwards celebrated his marriage with Anastasia Romanova. The same year a great conflagration took place at Moscow. The mob affected to believe that this had been caused by the Glinskis, who were very unpopular, and massacred a member of that family. After this time Ivan seems to have committed himself very much to the guidance of the priest Silvester and Alexis Adasheff. This was the happiest portion of his reign, for he was also greatly under the influence of his amiable wife. To this period also belongs a recension of the Sudelmik of his grandfather Ivan III. (1550), and the Stoylaff, or Book of the Hundred Chapters, by which the affairs of the church were regulated (1551). In the following year Ivan became master of Kazan, and two years later of Astrakhan. The power of the Mongols was no.y almost broken. Triumphant in the south and the east, he then turned his attention to the north, being anxious to open up a means of communication with the west. He anticipated the plans which Peter the Great was destined to carry out long afterwards. He was thus brought into collision with the Swedes and the Teutonic Knights. When Ivan sent a German named Schlitt to procure the assistance of some foreign artisans, they were stopped by the Germans and prevented from entering Russian territory. In consequence of this, war afterwards broke out between Ivan and the Order. In 1558 the Russian army invaded Livonia, and took several towns, whereupon the Order made an alliance with Sigismund Augustus of Poland. But, while Russia was busy with this war, a great change was taking place in the homo policy of Ivan. He threw off the influence of Silvester and Adasheff, who were both banished. From this timo may be said to date the commencement of the atrocities of this czar which have earned him the epithet constantly- added to his name. He was especially moved by the treason of Prince Andrew Kurbski, who, having lost a battle with the Poles, was too much afraid of the wrath of his imperial master to venture again into his clutches. He accordingly fled to the king of Poland, by whom he was well received, and from his safe retreat he commenced an angry correspondence with the czar, reproaching him with his cruelties (see below, p. 104). The answer of Ivan has been preserved. In it he dwells upon the degrad- ing subjection in which he had been kept by his early advisers, and attempts 'to justify his cruelties by saying that they were only his slaves whom he had killed, over whom God had given him power of life and death. In December 1564 Ivan retired with a few personal friends to his retreat at Alexandrovskoe, near Moscow, where he passed his time pretty much as Louis XI. did at Plessy-les-Tours, for he resembled the French monarch both in his cruelty and his superstition. The boiars, afraid that the monarch was about to quit them for ever, went in crowds to Alexandrovskoe to supplicate him to return to Moscow. This he finally consented to do, and on his return established his bodyguard of oprichniks, who were the chief agents of his cruelty. In the year in which he retired to Alexandrovskoe we have the establish- ment of a printing-press at Moscow. Ivan now commenced a long series of cruelties. To this period belong the deposi- tion and perhaps murder of Philip, the archbishop of Mos- cow ; the execution of Alexandra, the widow of his brother Yuri ; the atrocities committed at Novgorod, which seems to have fallen under the tyrant's vengeance for having meditated opening its gates to the king of Poland ; and, lastly, the terrible butcheries on the Red Square (Krasnaia Plostchad). It was in the reign of Ivan that the English first had dealings with Russia. In 1553, while Edward VI. was on the throne, three ships were sent out under Willoughby and Chancellor to look for a north-east passage to China and India. Willoughby and the crews of two of the ships were frozen to death, but Chancellor arrived safely in the White Sea, and thence proceeded to the court of Ivan, by whom he was favourably received. The English secured great trading privileges from Ivan, and established fac- tories in the country. In one of his mad sallies, Ivan actually wrote to Queen Elizabeth (1570) asking for a safe retreat in her dominions if he should be driven out by his own subjects. Ivan was continually waging war in the Baltic territory with the Teutonic Knights, in which, although on the whole unsuccessful, he committed great cruelties. But in 1571 he was obliged to suffer another invasion of the Mongols of the Crimea, who, to quote the quaint language of an English resident, burned " the Mosco every stick " (Hakluyt's Voyages, i. 402). On the death of Sigismund Augustus of Poland in 1572, when the crown of that country had become elective, the family of the Jagieltos being now extinct, Ivan declared himself one of the com- petitors. The successful candidate was the French princo Henry of Valois, but he soon fled from his new kingdom, and, on the throne again becoming vacant, the redoubtable Stephen Batory was chosen, who proved a formidable foe to the tyrant now growing old. In consequence of the successes of Stephen, Ivan was obliged to abandon all his

