Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/238

 214 And it was abominably handled. Ivan, between his last humiliation at Revel and his former one at Warsaw, was in a fury. At Lenewarden he had the eyes of the aged Marshal, Gaspard von Münster, torn out, and then had him whipped to death (Karamzine, 'History of Russia,' ix. 465, note). Other men who had commanded fortified towns were impaled, quartered, hacked to pieces. At Ascheraden the screams of forty virgins, violated all at once in a garden, rang across the Dvina, from one bank to the other, for four hours (Forsten, 'The Baltic Question,' i. 667). The new feats of arms performed by Magnus served to exasperate the Tsar. He suspected his partner of having made terms with the Poles. This was going rather far. The 'King of Livonia' had not reached this point yet; but between the Tsar and him, the Livonians unhesitatingly chose the lesser evil, and Magnus took advantage of their feeling to act as if he were master, and make his shadowy kingdom a reality. Without orders to that effect, he occupied Kokenhausen, Ascheraden, Lenewarden, Ronneburg, and Wolmar, on his own account, took possession of Derpt, and went so far as to claim that the Russians were not to molest his 'faithful lieges' there. This was but another dream, and the awakening was bitter. Ivan hurried to Kokenhausen, had fifty of the 'King's' Germans put to death, and ordered him to appear before him. 'Obey, or go back whence you came! We are not far from each other, and I have soldiers and biscuit!' The wretched man tried to negotiate a reconciliation. Ivan had his emissaries whipped, and repeated his order. The next morning Magnus cast himself at his feet. 'Idiot!' shouted the Tsar. 'Beggar, whom I received into my family and fed and shod! Do you think you can hold out against me?' He had him shut up in a hut, and kept him there, lying on straw, for several days. Then, from Ascheraden, where his soldiery behaved in the manner I have already described, he dragged him to Wenden. The town surrendered, and the garrison blew itself up with the fortress. Ivan had one of the notable inhabitants, George Wicke, impaled in presence of his fellow-townsmen, and then proceeded to Derpt with his prisoner, who expected the same fate.

Contrary to all expectations, he was pardoned. The Tsar, who now thought his final victory assured, was inclined to mercy. But Magnus, though obliged to content himself with a few small towns, had to undertake to pay a sum of 40,000 gold florins, and he had not a crown to his name! Very soon Oberpalen, the last bulwark of his ephemeral royalty, fell into the hands of the Swedes, and that was the end of his strange adventure. He fled, reached Pilten, and offered himself, with all his possessions beyond the Dvina—his in name only,