Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/285

 Rh gorod. Simeon Bekboulatovitch would probably have ended his days at Kassimov, if his conversion to Christianity and his marriage with this same Mstislavski's daughter had not made his continuance in that tsarate a matter of impossibility. The majority of the population was Mahometan, and claimed that its ruler should profess the same faith. But there was no room at Moscow for a Tartar Tsar, even a dethroned one. Ivan cut the difficulty short by giving up his throne and his title to Mstislavski's son-in-law. How? Why? It is a mystery! The one thing we are quite sure of is the fact. From 1575 onward we possess a great number of documents in which Simeon Bekboulatovitch officially assumes the title of 'Tsar of all the Russias,' and others show us Ivan lavishing marks of the deepest respect on this counterpart of himself, addressing petitions to him, like any of his subjects, and leaving his own carriage when he approaches the precincts of the palace he has given up to the new master. Simeon would even appear to have been crowned, although Ivan, after having admitted the fact in one of his conversations with the English agent, Daniel Sylvester, attempted, later, to withdraw his acknowledgment. 'There was nothing final about that,' he then remarked, and exhibited seven crowns and other insignia of sovereignty which he still preserved. None the less, one of his eight crowns had been set on Simeon's head.

This comedy was carried on till 1576, and we need hardly say that never for one instant, during that space of time, did the son of Vassili contemplate ceding anything more than the semblance of sovereignty to his substitute. This period, as my readers will remember, was that of the negotiations as to the succession to the Polish throne; in these negotiations Simeon Bekboulatovitch was never mentioned. In 1576, when the Emperor's envoys, Cobenzl and Printz von Buchau, arrived, Ivan behaved as if the new Tsar had not existed, and shortly afterwards he dismissed him, having enriched him with the Duchy of Tver, which, as my readers may know, had lately been laid waste, was now reduced to the two towns of Tver and Torjok, with their dependencies, and was only thankful to recover its autonomy to some extent. Here Simeon was very far from likening himself to an independent Sovereign, after the fashion of the old appanaged Dukes. His letters to Ivan are signed 'your slave' (kholop). He commanded an army corps during the Livonian campaigns and the Polish wars, cut rather a poor figure, and only outlived Ivan to experience cruel changes of fortune under his successors. Stripped of his duchy by Feodor, deprived of his sight by Boris Godounov, who looked on him as a possible rival, he ended his existence in 1611, at the monastery of Solovki, or, according to other