Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/251

 Rh event Sylvester and Adachev underwent a trial. Disgrace is in itself a downward slope, and no doubt some sentiment of caution or some remnant of consideration prevented Ivan from at first revealing the full depth of his resentment. But even now the accused men escaped. One received a sentence of still more distant banishment, to the monastery of Solovki on the Frozen Sea, while the other, after a short stay at Fellin, in Livonia, where he had been appointed voiévode, and where, in all probability, he did not keep himself quiet, was sent to prison. No attempt on the Tsarina's life was recognised, evidently, nor, most likely, discussed by the judges; for as to proof people were not over particular in those days. In later years Ivan, in fits of fury, and with the angry clamour of some wild aurochs bellowing in the forest for his mate, reproached his faithless friends with having parted him from 'his doe.' But even then, though he called Sylvester before the 'judgment-seat of the Divine Lamb,' he would not, he said, 'seek judgment against him' here below. And in his very charges he contradicted himself. At one time he accused the two parvenus of having sought to place their aristocratic supporters on a par with the Tsar, at another he asserted their intention of dragging their followers down to their own level. He blamed them for having carried out some of the reforms he cared for most, and which he was still pursuing, such as the conversion of the freeholds into fiefs. The grievances pleaded in the Tsar's correspondence with Kourbski are nothing but arguments for the purposes of his controversy, and when he came to polemics, Ivan was never overnice as to correctness or good faith. To demonstrate the interference of third parties in the affairs of his Government, he did not hesitate to exaggerate and alter facts. Sylvester and Adachev, according to his story, had brought him into such a state of tutelage that they even measured out his hours of sleep to him. 'I was like a child; I had no will at all!' And this argument was also used as a retort when Kourbski complained that his own strength had been overtaxed. 'By whom? Was he not master, then, with the pope,' and 'Adachev, that dog taken off a dung-heap?'

The war in Livonia, undertaken and carried through against the advice of the whole of the 'little council,' in itself suffices to dispose of all these allegations. After the Siege of Kazan, 'all the wise men,' as Kourbski testifies, advised the Tsar to remain in the town for some time. We know he did nothing of the sort. Later, in 1555, the same counsellors met with better success when they begged the Tsar not to flee before the Tartars. A consideration of these facts will enable us to gauge their undoubted influence. Some information as