Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/188

 164 chroniclers tell us, turning their backs and lifting up their garments, they cast defiance at him: 'Look, my Lord Tsar, this is how thou. wilt take Kazan. …' And with strange yells and contortions, which passed for sorcerers' spells, they terrified their adversaries' superstitious minds.

Ivan did not flinch. To fight the spells, which had called down torrents of rain, he sent to Moscow for a miraculous cross, which brought back the fine weather, and against the fortifications, which the Tartars so industriously repaired, he appealed to the skill of his foreign engineers, who constructed works of approach which doubled the effect of the Russian fire and hastened the end of the business. In the popular poetry this siege, which really lasted a few weeks, attains the proportions of the Siege of Troy. Ivan is described as having spent eight, or even thirty, years at it. By the end of September, in reality, the artillery had battered a sufficient breach, and a general assault was arranged. This was delivered on October 2, 1552. The result, a complete victory for the besiegers, was a foregone conclusion. But on this occasion Ivan, who had hitherto proved his tenacity and courage, did not distinguish himself. His followers had already grown accustomed to see him take active command. By making them fear, he had taught them to obey him. They looked for him at the head of the columns that moved out to the attack. He was not there. The leader had disappeared; all that was left was the Rurikovitch, who fled before danger, shrank from the bloody struggle, and lingered in prayer before the altars. At dawn, while Prince Michael Vorotynski was blowing up the last works, a solemn office had been said in the chapel erected in the middle of the Muscovite camp, and the legend tells us that the mining operations corresponded with the solemn course of the Orthodox liturgy. The Slav version of the ponem inimicos tuos scabellum pedum tuorum, chanted by the deacons, was followed by the first explosion, and a yet louder one greeted the Gospel verse, 'There shall be but one fold and one Shepherd.' But deacons and sappers alike had done their work; the thing, now, was to mount the breach. Appeals to the God of the Christian and the God of Mahomet were already mingling in the air with the hail of arrows and bullets. A breathless boïar ran in: 'Sire, it is time to start!' he cried; 'your men are at close quarters with the Tartars, and your regiment is waiting for you!' Gravely Ivan replied, in the words of a Scripture text, of which the men of his period and his intellectual calibre carried an inexhaustible supply in their memories. This one conveniently indicated the value of long prayers, and the Tsar did not budge an inch. Then came a second and more pressing summons. The Tartars were recovering their