Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/278

 254 in all, and if we only look, among ten similar scenes, at the story of the sacking of Liège by Charles the Bold in 1468—an operation performed with the friendly help of his cousin of France—we shall perceive Ivan to have been nothing but a plagiarist. Turn to your Michelet: 'The horror of this destruction of a whole people lies in the fact that it was not a bloody assault, the rage and fury of a victorious foe, but a long-drawn execution. The persons found in the houses were guarded, kept back, and then thrown into the Meuse in an orderly and methodical manner. Three months later the drownings were still going on. … The burning of the town was also conducted in the most orderly fashion' (Histoire de France, viii. 148). And Henri Martin, writing on lines supplied by Commines, Jean de Troyes, and Olivier de la Marche, says: 'Women, nuns, were violated, and then killed, priests' throats were cut on the altar-steps. … All the prisoners the soldiers had spared were hung or drowned in the Meuse' (Histoire de France, vii. 44, etc.).

The copy follows the original in every particular, the number of victims, in this case, being reckoned at 50,000 and more. The very setting of the scene is the same; the carnage in both cases took place in winter-time, in November and December.

From Novgorod, Ivan went on to Pskov. All through one night, while he was encamped in one of the suburbs of the town, the bells kept ringing. A dreary watch! But the punishment was here confined to a general pillage; and, in the popular mind, this unhoped-for clemency was attributed to the intervention of one of those visionaries who then swarmed all over the Muscovite Empire from one end to the other. This iourodivyï, Nicholas Salos, took it upon himself to offer the Sovereign a slice of meat. 'Lent!' cried Ivan. 'Lent!' came the reply; 'and thou art making thyself ready to devour human flesh?' It is more probable that the satiety which was the result of all his carnage, and the humble demeanour of the inhabitants, who had been well drilled by their voiévode, disarmed the monarch's wrath. But at Pskov, even as at Novgorod, many families were removed, and taken away into the interior; and in this matter, too, Ivan was only following an illustrious example. 'Louis XI. swore there should be no more town of Arras—that all the dwellers in it should be driven out, without even taking their furniture with them, and that he would take families and craftsmen out of other provinces, even out of Languedoc, and bring them to repopulate the fortress.' I quote Michelet once more (Histoire de France, viii. 322).

I should add that shortly afterwards, when Pskov was be-