Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/203

 Rh bag: 'here's a beast that promises to grow big and fat!' And, ordering refreshments to be served to the astonished magistrates, he gambolled joyously about, jumping on the tables. Terrified, the city fathers dilated on the impossibility of getting so large a sum of money together in a few days.

'Come, come, there are twelve barrels full of money in the cellars of your Town Hall!'

'Maybe so, but we are not the only people who have the keys. Revel has one, and Riga has another.'

'Very good, very good! If you don't choose to give the money, the Tsar will come and fetch it!'

And the Tsar really was coming. Had not Macarius likened him to Alexander Nevski after the Siege of Kazan? Ivan was to pin his pride on justifying the flattery by following in the national hero's wake, and going back to the road out of which, since the thirteenth century, the necessities of her defence against the Tartars of the East had forced Russia. But the times were changed. Poland, Sweden, Denmark, and the whole of Europe were to take part in the struggle now; even Spain herself, to serve her dream of extending her universal monarchy to the distant North, aimed at seizing the Sound, disputed the Danish alliance with Mary Stuart, and claimed an interest in the fray.

In February, 1557, a Livonian deputation made its appearance at Moscow, begged for further delay, and was dismissed. Ivan refused to see the envoys himself, desired Adachev to pack them off, and organized a punitive expedition. It was swift and cruel. Towards the close of the year, an army, largely made up of Tartars, and commanded by Schah-Ali, the late Tsar of Kazan, invaded Livonia, and ravaged the country in a frightful manner. Not a feature was lacking. Women were abused till they died, children were torn from their mother's wombs, houses were burnt down, crops were destroyed. There may be a certain exaggeration in the chronicles of the country, but at that period war was hideously barbarous everywhere, and Schah-Ali's Tcheremisses were probably no whit inferior to the Duke of Alva's more disciplined bandits. Having chosen out the most beautiful of their female captives, and satisfied their lust on them, they tied them to trees, and exercised their skill as marksmen on their living targets. This may have occurred, though the presence of two Russian commanders—Prince Michael Vassilévitch Glinski and Daniel Romanovitch Zakharine, brother of the Tsarina Anastasia—probably laid some restraint on these savage performances.