Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/290

 266 massacre, thrusting the victims through with his hunting-spear and throwing them into the river. The Sovereign's two sons, summoned to witness the sight, were so sickened by it that the youngest braved his father's wrath and took to flight. Not a detail is lacking. Some rich merchants offered a ransom for their children. When Ivan refused it they upbraided him, and the Tsar, mad with rage, inflicted the most hideous tortures on the unhappy German women. They were flogged till the blood came, their nails were torn out, and when, even in the midst of their tortures, they continued to pray and call on the name of Jesus, their tongues were torn out too. At last they were killed with lance-heads, heated white-hot and thrust into their bodies, and their corpses were burnt. Other narratives of this same episode have come down to us. That of Horsey may possibly apply to some other scene of the same sort, for at the date given by Oderborn (1578) the English writer was not in Russia. But it seems unlikely that the suburb can have been destroyed twice over, and a French author, Margeret, like the Englishman, gives the date of the incident as 1580. Now, as to the horror and odiousness of the details given, these two last versions do not approach that of Oderborn. Margeret only mentions the destruction of two Protestant churches and the pillage of the German dwelling-houses, while all their inhabitants, 'without respect for age or sex,' and regardless of the winter season, were stripped 'as naked as children just out of their mothers' wombs.' Horsey speaks of women and young girls violated on the spot or carried off by the Opritchniki, some of whom sought refuge, after they had been stripped of their clothing, in the house of one of his fellow-countrymen. Margeret, indeed, does not dream of pitying the victims. 'They could not lay the blame of this on anyone but themselves, for, forgetting all their past sufferings, their behaviour had been so arrogant, their ways so haughty, and their dress so sumptuous, that they might all have been taken for princes and princesses.' The inhabitants of the suburb drew their wealth from the sale of strong drinks; they had levied excessive profits in their trade, and thus abused their monopoly.

But the most authoritative witness of all has yet to be summoned. In a Latin pamphlet, entitled Psalmorum Davidis Parodia Heroica, a native of Lubeck, bearing the name of Boch or Bochius, has inserted notes relative to a stay he made at Moscow in the year 1578. His presence there may have been connected with the negotiations then pending between Rome and Moscow. He was on the spot, in any case, when the events related by Oderborn took place; he bore his share in them, and, seeing he himself was a sufferer by them,