Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/189

 Rh lost ground, and the Sovereign's presence at the head of his troops was absolutely indispensable. … Ivan heaved a deep sigh, shed copious tears, and once more set himself, aloud, this time, to invoke the Divine help.

The whole spirit of his race was expressed in the young Prince's behaviour, and some allowance, too, must be made for his personal temperament and the particularly nervous nature we know him to have possessed.

Was he a coward? No! The man who was soon to face the fury of others, impose his indomitable will by fire and sword, and maintain it, in spite of the hatred, the weak-heartedness, and the defeated conspiracies of his closest comrades, for twenty years, the coming champion of the Opritchnina, could not be a coward. He was the heir of the Russian Princes who had made Russia great, not by prodigies of valour performed on battlefields, but by the dim paths of intrigue, bargain-making, and economy, by miracles of patience, cunning, humiliation, stoically borne; and he was the pupil of the ancient Eastern teachers of his country, who had imparted to him their own Asiatic habits of indifference, scorn of physical effort, and haughty calm. The act of fighting, of dealing blows and running the risk of receiving them, did not enter into their conception of a Sovereign's duty. The master had slaves for all that work. His part was to give his orders, send his men out to die, and say prayers himself.

But the boïars about Ivan did not take this view. One of them, very likely, offered his Sovereign some violence, for at last the Tsar, having exhausted every shift, kissed the miraculous picture of St. Sergius, drank a little holy water, swallowed a morsel of the host, received his chaplain's blessing, harangued the clergy, praying for their pardon, and claiming their blessing too, now he was going 'forth to suffer for the true faith,' mounted his horse, and galloped off to join his regiment. But even then, Kourbski tells us (and it did not occur to the Terrible himself to contradict this eye-witness's assertion), though the battle was nearly over, and there was no reason to fear any fresh onslaught on the part of the besieged forces, some difficulty was experienced in getting the horse and his rider to the front—the boïars had to lay their own hands on the bridle.

The Muscovite standards were already floating over the ramparts, and the leading columns of the assault had entered the town. The carnage began. Six thousand Tartars vainly tried to reach the open country by fording the river Kazanka. Ivan never thought of putting a stop to the bloodshed. Even in the West, a town taken by assault was a town condemned to death. The women and children alone were spared, and they