Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/265

 Rh tating some dark design against them, the nature of which would not be revealed till its effects made themselves felt. What was apparent at the present moment was merely the usual setting of the scene. Obediently all men prepared to bear their part in the coming comedy. The boïars betrayed the correct amount of emotion, the populace rose up, shouted aloud, and was much affected. The merchants offered money, the most eloquent fashion of proving their share in the general feeling, and the Metropolitan was called upon to intercede with the Sovereign. Ivan was entreated not to forsake his people, but to rule as best pleased him, and mete out such treatment as he deemed fit to those of whom he thought he had reason to complain. A deputation took its way to Alexandrov, and the Tsar allowed himself to be mollified, but he made his own conditions; he intended to keep all traitors and rebels in disgrace, to put some to death, and confiscate their fortunes, and he would not go back to Moscow till he had organized his Opritchnina.

This, in the common parlance of that day, was the name applied to the dowry paid to the wives of the great Princes. At banquets, certain special dishes which the amphitryon kept in front of himself, and the contents of which he divided amongst his chief guests, were called Opritchnyié. And a particular class of peasants settled on the lands belonging to certain monasteries were known as Opritchniki (from opritch, a part). Let my readers now cast their minds back to the ukase of October 10, 1550 (see p. 148), which gave the district of Moscow a territorial and political constitution of its own, and settled a selection of sloojilyié lioodi, taken from every rank of the nobility and every province of the Empire, within its borders. Without any essential modification of the existing order of things, solely by virtue of this transplanting process and of a change in the nature of the tenure, Ivan had summoned the men just transplanted to form the nucleus of a court, an administration, and an army, all reorganized on a new basis. The Opritchnina of 1565, in its fundamental idea, was neither more nor less than the extension and wider application of this original plan.

Ivan now divided his Empire into two parts. One of these was to preserve its ancient organization and its ancient government—in other words, the voiévodes, lieutenants, bailiffs, and kormlenchtchiki of every kind were to carry on the administration as it had been carried on hitherto, a college presided over by two boïars taking the place of the Supreme Council as the centre of the various services. The other part, which comprised various portions of the country, a certain number of towns, and several quarters of the capital city, was converted