Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/254

 230 Guedymin's descendants swarmed at the Tsar's Court, and at that of Warsaw, the descendants of Rurik were legion. Through a Princess of Tver, who married Olguerd, many Polish families descended from that Lithuanian Prince were related to Russian houses. The ancestors of the Odoiévski, the Biélski, and the Vorotynski had lived partly in one country and partly in the other; some of them had served Casimir, and some had served Ivan the Third. The Mstislavski had only left Lithuania in 1526, when they made way for the Czartoryski, a member of which family had once been Governor of Pskov. In 1521, the last Duke of Riazan had sought refuge in Lithuania, and with him representatives of some of the greatest of the Muscovite families—a Biélski, a Liatski, a Vichnioviétski, a Chérémétiév.

Still the stream flowed on, and the Terrible himself hesitated, at first, to check it effectually. Prince Ivan Dmitriévitch Biélski, in spite of the heavy security already mentioned, soon made a fresh attempt, and was once more pardoned. Ivan Vassiliévitch Chérémétiév's turn came in 1564. Kourbski declares he was tortured, loaded with chains, and punished, in the person of his brother Nikita, whom the Tsar had strangled. Concerning Nikita we know nothing, but very shortly after this, we find Ivan Vassilévitch in possession of his posts, and it was not till long afterwards that he was exiled to Biélooziéro, where he seems to have provided himself with a fairly comfortable retreat.

These details are indispensable to the understanding of an episode identical in its nature with all those we have just reviewed, but which the unrivalled personality of its hero lifts out of the ordinary category.

Born towards the year 1528, descended, through the ancient Dukes of Smolensk and Jaroslavl, from Vladimir Monomachus, and belonging, like them, to the elder branch of the Rurikovitchy, Prince Andrew Mikhaïlovitch Kourbski was naturally involved in the disgrace that fell upon his friends. After his failure under the walls of Nevel, and the subsequent unsuccessful and suspicious negotiations with the Swedes for the cession of Helmet, he had special reasons for meditating escape. In 1564, declaring, as all who did like him declared, that nothing but pressing danger had driven him to such a course, he took the plunge. If he had stayed, so he averred, his head would have been in danger. Well received by the King of Poland—he had probably taken his precautions to insure this—he was assigned an establishment worthy of his