Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/255

 Rh rank, and did not hesitate to bear arms against his fatherland in his new master's service. He spent nineteen years in his adopted country, and did not make himself beloved there. His wanderings have passed into a legend. My readers may know the story of Vaska Chibanov, the bearer of the first letter addressed to Ivan by the refugee, 'From my master to Your traitor.' They may have seen a picture of the scene. Ivan, having received the message, leans, as he reads the letter, on his hunting-spear, and drives it into the messenger's foot. … A Moscow bookseller, who bears the name thus glorified by the heroic henchman, takes a pride, nowadays, in adorning his publications and circulars with this picture, which has no historical foundation. Chibanov did not go to Poland with Kourbski. It was on the scaffold, on which he suffered after being arrested with all the fugitive's other servants, that he proved his fidelity by refusing to deny, and by defending, his master. Kourbski's letters, like Ivan's replies, were probably not sent to their destination in this fashion at all. Messengers for such a purpose would doubtless not have been easy to find. These missives were open letters, intended for publication, and reached the persons to whom they were addressed by means of their publicity. One of the Tsar's lucubrations covers sixty pages, and the monarch would certainly not have gone to so much trouble for Kourbski alone. The fact that this argument was carried on coram publico lifts the incident above the dulness of everyday life, and constitutes its chief interest for us, now.

In that lazy land of Poland, where he had found shelter, Kourbski must have had a great deal of time on his hands. He turned it to account by writing a 'History of Ivan,' to which I have already referred, and in which he has done his utmost to condemn his former master's personal government, and extol the 'little council' and its members. To this end he divides the reign into two parts—the period of glory, previous to the disgrace of Sylvester, Adachev, and Kourbski; and the disastrous, criminal, and shameful period which followed on that event. In the service of his cause, he has drawn largely on his imagination, and has composed a list of Ivan's misdeeds, in which, as we have seen, many errors may be detected. Yet part of his accusation has been accepted, tacitly or explicitly, by the accused person, and part has been verified by other authorities. The historian also turned his attention to ecclesiastical history, and that, considering his own antecedents, in a somewhat unexpected spirit. In Russia he had been the friend, not only of Maximus the Greek, but of that Artemi who was accused of heresy before the conciliable of 1531. In Poland, where he was face to face with a Catholic propaganda which threatened his coreligionists, he suddenly discovered, in