Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/277

 Rh cruelty, like that of Louis IX., was always, even when it affected Churchmen, attended by pious scruples and devout practices. As regards Novgorod, the list preserved at the monastery of St. Cyril only contains 1,500 names; but another Sinodik, belonging to the monastery of the Blessed Saviour at Prilouki, proves that the names thus enshrined were those of the more prominent victims only. Guagnino and Oderborn speak, in the same category, of 2,770 persons as having been killed at Novgorod, without reckoning the humbler folk.

Be that as it may, the slaughter was immense and abominable, and when there were no more human beings for him to strike, Ivan turned his fury against inanimate things. As he had shown peculiar ferocity in his dealings with the monasteries, which he had taken to be the chief centre of the spirit of revolt, he strove, and for the same reason no doubt, to destroy the trade and industry of the great city. All the shops within the town, and the very dwelling-houses in the suburbs, the chief home of its commercial and industrial life, were first systemically stripped, and then razed to the ground, the Tsar personally superintending the process, while his Opritchniki scoured the whole of the neighbouring country within a radius of from 200 to 250 versts, if we may believe the chroniclers, and ravaged every place impartially.

At last, on January 13, 1570, when nothing was left him to destroy, Ivan commanded the chief of the townsmen who had been spared, so many for each street, to be brought into his presence. The poor wretches, already more dead than alive, were asking themselves what yet more hideous fate could be reserved for them. Contrary to all their expectations, the monarch, pacified, turned a gracious eye upon them, and made them a most friendly speech, advising them to cast off all fear, and live peaceful lives, praying God to preserve the Tsar and his Empire from all such traitors as Pimenius.

This was the Terrible's farewell. That very day he departed, taking with him the Archbishop, and his priests and deacons, who, though they had not ransomed themselves from the praviéje, had not shared the monks' cruel fate.

Novgorod drew a breath of relief; but the town had received a blow from which it was never to recover. Together with the flower of its inhabitants, the prosperity of the city had received its deathblow; and even if Ivan had a thousand reasons for his pitiless treatment, he had carried it too far. But while we make some allowance for the inevitable exaggeration of every witness who deals with this gloomy episode, we must not fail likewise to remember similar events belonging to a not distant epoch of the history of Western Europe. Taking it all