Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/279

 Rh sieged by the Poles, the townsfolk offered a most heroic resistance. Would they have stood so firm without their terrifying lesson in fidelity? We may be permitted to doubt it. The two cities, whose forcible annexation to the Empire had disturbed their habits and damaged their interests, could hardly have been forced into the observance of their new duties by any incentive less strong than fear.

Going back to Moscow, Ivan treated himself to a triumphal entry, as if he had been returning from a successful campaign, and to an entertainment in the form of one of those masquerading processions in which, at a later period, Peter the Great was to take so much delight. Preceded by one of his jesters, mounted on an ox, he was seen parading along at the head of his Opritchniki, and displaying, like them, the insignia of that dreaded confraternity—a broom and a dog's head. This over, he applied himself to his preparations for trying the numerous accomplices of the crime he had just been punishing at Novgorod and Pskov. This occupation filled many months, and it was not till June 25, 1570, that the Tsar summoned his subjects to attend the execution of the culprits who had been declared guilty. There were three hundred of them, and all issued, mutilated and worn out, from the torture-chambers which had already robbed them of everything but the faintest breath of life. To Ivan's astonishment, the great square was empty. The instruments of torture that stood ready—the stoves, and red-hot pincers, and iron claws, and needles, the cords which were to rub human bodies into two halves, the great coppers full of boiling water—had failed to attract, this time. Whether at St. Petersburg or at Moscow, even down to the middle of the eighteenth century, no other sight could stir curiosity to such a point, and the audience was almost always very numerous. But there had been too much of this sort of thing lately, and the executioners were growing too long-armed. Every man sought to hide deeper than his neighbour. The Tsar had to send reassuring messages allover the town. 'Come along! Don't be afraid! Nobody will be hurt! …' At last, out of cellars and garrets, the necessary spectators were tempted forth, and forthwith Ivan, inexhaustible and quite unabashed, began a lengthy speech. 'Could he do less than punish the traitors? … But he had promised to be merciful, and he would keep his word! Out of the three hundred who had been sentenced, a hundred and eighty should have their lives!'

But to make up for it, those who were not spared were to pay for all the rest. Ivan the Terrible certainly was a perfect virtuoso in the art of inflicting suffering and causing death. Yet in this matter, too, he was only following an inclination