Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/377

 Rh neighbourhood. Ivan, informed of this, advised the colonizers to arm a sufficient number of Cossacks and Ostiaks to enable them to put a stop to these aggressions. The Cossacks, in their pursuit of the aggressors, soon found their way across the Ural, and thus the legendary series of brilliant exploits began.

Just at that time a Tartar Khanate had risen up in Siberia, founded, it is believed, by the Taïbougi family, which, having quarrelled with the reigning house, had separated from it, and was labouring to bring the neighbouring countries, held by Bachkirs and Ostiaks, under its own rule. The capital of this State was called Sibir, or Isker. Here a Khan of Kirghiz-Khaïsiac origin, named Koutchoum, had reigned since 1556, when he had dethroned Ivan's former vassal, Iadiger. Alarmed by the progress made by the Stroganovs, and anxious to preserve his own independence, Koutchoum despatched his son or nephew, the Tsarevitch Makhmetkoul, to attack the new Russian settlements. Hostilities continued till 1582, and Ivan was thus led to increase the concessions and powers granted to the brothers James and Gregory Stroganov. The banks of the Tobol and its affluents beyond the Ural were made over to them. Between 1574 and 1579, the inheritance of this immense power and the burdens connected with it passed, by the death of its holders, to a third brother, Simon Anikiév, and to his two nephews, Maximus Iakovlevitch and Nikita Grigoriévitch, who, to save a perilous position, had recourse to a most dangerous expedient. The Cossack encampments (stanitzy) on the banks of the Don were the refuge and meeting-place, as I have already remarked, of a population of outlaws, drawn from every corner of the Russian Empire—men who were half-robbers and half-soldiers, most of whom had slipped through the hangman's fingers, and in whom that recollection served to wipe out all fear of Tsar, or God, or devil. Proposals for enlistment sent to these places, and coupled with liberal largesse, attracted to the banks of the river Kama, with a whole troop of bold companions, the man who is taken, even nowadays, to have been the conqueror of Siberia, but who was only the hero (his special glory was the result of a mere accident) of one out of a thousand episodes in which brute force, serving the steadier and surer progress of civilization, has insured the Muscovite domination in the Far East of Asia. Legend will indulge in such whims as these.