Part 14

The suggestion accorded well with Yermak's humor. He at once began to enlist volunteers for the enterprise, adding to his own Cossack band a reinforcement of Russians and Tartars and of German and Polish prisoners of war, until he had sixteen hundred and thirty-six men under his command. With these he crossed the mountains in 1580, and terrified the natives to submission with his fire-arms, a form of weapon new to them. Making their way down the Tura and Taghil Rivers, the adventurers crossed the immense untrodden forests of Tobol, and Kutchum, the Tartar khan, was assailed in his capital town of Ister, near where Tobolsk now stands.

Many battles with the Tartars were fought, Ister was taken, the khan fled to the steppes, and his cousin was made prisoner by the adventurers. Yermak now, having added by his valor a great domain to the Russian empire, purchased the favor of Ivan IV. by the present of this new kingdom. He made his way to the Irtish and Obi, opened trade with the rich khanate of Bokhara, south of the desert, and in various ways sought to consolidate the conquest he had made. But misfortune came to the conqueror. One day, being surprised by the Tartars when unprepared, he leaped into the Irtish in full armor and tried to swim its rapid current. The armor he wore had been sent him by the czar, and had served him well in war. It proved too heavy for his powers of swimming, bore him beneath the hungry waters, and brought the career of the victorious brigand to an end. After his death his dismayed followers fled from Siberia, yielding it to Tartar hands again.

Yermak--in his way a rival of Cortez and Pizarro--gained by his conquest the highest fame among the Russian people. They exalted him to the level of a hero, and their church has raised him to the rank of a saint, at whose tomb miracles are performed. As regards the Russian saints, it may here be remarked that they have been constructed, as a rule, from very unsanctified timber, as may be seen from the examples we have heretofore given. Not only the people and the priests but the poets have paid their tribute to Yermak's fame, epic poems having been written about his exploits and his deeds made familiar in popular song.

Though the Cossacks withdrew after Yermak's death, others soon succeeded them. The furs of Siberia formed a rich prize whose allurement could not be ignored, and new bands of hunters and adventurers poured into the country, sustained by regular troops from Moscow. The advance was made through the northern districts to avoid the denser populations of the south. New detachments of troops were sent, who built forts and settled laborers around them, with the duty of supplying the garrisons with food, powder, and arms. By 1650 the Amur was reached and followed to the Pacific Ocean.

It was a brief period in which to conquer a country of such vast extent. But no organized resistance was met, and the land lay almost at the mercy of the invaders. There was vigorous opposition by the tribes, but they were soon subdued. The only effective resistance they met was that of the Chinese, who obliged the Cossacks to quit the Amur, which river they claimed. In 1855 the advance here began again, and the whole course of the river was occupied, with much territory to its south. Siberia, thus conquered by arms, is being made secure for Russia by a trans-continental railroad and hosts of new settlers, and promises in the future to become a land of the greatest prosperity and wealth.

THE MACBETH OF RUSSIA.

On the 15th of May, 1591, five boys were playing in the court-yard of the Russian palace at Uglitch. With them were the governess and nurse of the principal child--a boy ten years of age--and a servant-woman. The child had a knife in his hand, with which he was amusing himself by thrusting it into the ground or cutting a piece of wood.

Unluckily, the attention of the women for a brief interval was drawn aside. When the nurse looked at her charge again, to her horror she found him writhing on the ground, bathed in blood which poured from a large wound in his throat.

The shrieks of the nurse quickly drew others to the spot, and in a moment there was a terrible uproar, for the dying boy was no less a person than Dmitri, son of Ivan the Terrible, brother of Feodor, the reigning czar, and heir to the crown of Russia. The tocsin was sounded, and the populace thronged into the court-yard, thinking that the palace was on fire. On learning what had actually happened they burst into uncontrollable fury. The child had not killed himself, but had been murdered, they said, and a victim for their rage was sought.

In a moment the governess was hurled bleeding and half alive to the ground, and one of her slaves, who came to her aid, was killed. The keeper of the palace was accused of the crime, and, though he fled and barred himself within a house, the infuriated mob broke through the doors and killed him and his son. The body of the child was carried into a neighboring church, and here the son of the governess, against whom suspicion had been directed, was murdered before it under his mother's eyes. Fresh victims to the wrath of the populace were sought, and the lives of the governess and some others were with difficulty saved.

As for the child who had killed himself or had been killed, alarming stories had recently been set afloat. He was said to be the image of his terrible father, and to manifest an unnatural delight in blood and the sight of pain, his favorite amusement being to torture and kill animals. But it is doubtful if any of this was true, for there was then one in power who had a reason for arousing popular prejudice against the boy.

That this may be better understood we must go back. Ivan had killed his ablest son, as told in a previous story, and Feodor, the present czar, was a feeble, timid, sickly incapable, who was a mere tool in the hands of his ambitious minister, Boris Godunof. Boris craved the throne. Between him and this lofty goal lay only the feeble Feodor and the child Dmitri, the sole direct survivors of the dynasty of Rurik. With their death without children that great line would be extinguished.

The story of Boris reminds us in several particulars of that of the Scotch usurper Macbeth. His future career had been predicted, in the dead of night, by astrologers, who said, "You shall yet wear the crown." Then they became silent, as if seeing horrors which they dared not reveal. Boris insisted on knowing more, and was told that he should reign, but only for seven years. In joy he exclaimed, "No matter, though it be for only seven days, so that I reign!"

This ambitious lord, who ruled already if he did not reign, had therefore a purpose in exciting prejudice against and distrust of Dmitri, the only heir to the crown, and in taking steps for his removal. Feodor dead, the throne would fall like ripe fruit into his own hands.

Yet, whether guilty of the murder or not, he took active steps to clear himself of the dark suspicion of guilt. An inquest was held, and the verdict rendered that the boy had killed himself by accident. At once the regent proceeded to punish those who had taken part in the outbreak at Uglitch. The czaritza, mother of Dmitri, who had first incited the mob, was forced to take the veil. Her brothers, who had declared the act one of murder, were sent to remote prisons. Uglitch was treated with frightful severity. More than two hundred of its inhabitants were put to death. Others were maimed and thrown into dungeons. All the rest, except those who had fled, were exiled to Siberia, and with them was banished the very church-bell which had called them out by its tocsin peal. A town of thirty thousand inhabitants was depopulated that, as people said, every evidence of the guilt of Boris Godunof might be destroyed.

This dreadful violence did Boris more harm than good. Macbeth stabbed the sleeping grooms to hide his guilt. Boris destroyed a city. But he only caused the people to look on him as an assassin and to doubt the motives of even his noblest acts.

A fierce fire broke out that left much of Moscow in ruin. Boris rebuilt whole streets and distributed money freely among the people. But even those who received this aid said that he had set fire to the city himself that he might win applause with his money. A Tartar army invaded the empire and appeared at the gates of Moscow. All were in terror but Boris, who hastily built redoubts, recruited soldiers, and inspired all with his own courage. The Tartars were defeated, and hardly a third of them reached home again. Yet all the return the able regent received was the popular saying that he had called in the Tartars in order to make the people forget the death of Dmitri.

A child was born to Feodor,--a girl. The enemies of the regent instantly declared that a boy had been born and that he had substituted for it a girl. It died in a few days, and then it was said that he had poisoned it.

Yet Boris went on, disdaining his enemies, winning power as he went. He gained the favor of the clergy by giving Russia a patriarch of its own. The nobles who opposed him were banished or crushed. He made the peasants slaves of the land, and thus won over the petty lords. Cities were built, fortresses erected, the enemies of Russia defeated; Siberia was brought under firm control, and the whole nation made to see that it had never been ruled by abler hands.

Boris in all this was strongly paving his way to the throne. In 1598 the weak Feodor died. He left no sons, and with him, its fifty-second sovereign, the dynasty of Rurik the Varangian came to an end. It had existed for more than seven centuries. Branches of the house of Rurik remained, yet no member of it dared aspire to that throne which the tyrant Ivan had made odious.

A new ruler had to be chosen by the voice of those in power, and Boris stood supreme among the aspirants. The chronicles tell us, with striking brevity, "The election begins; the people look up to the nobles, the nobles to the grandees, the grandees to the patriarch; he speaks, he names Boris; and instantaneously, and as one man, all re-echo that formidable name."

And now Godunof played an amusing game. He held the reins of power so firmly that he could safely enact a transparent farce. He refused the sceptre. The grandees and the people begged him to accept it, and he took refuge from their solicitations in a monastery. This comedy, which even Cæsar had not long played, Boris kept up for over a month. Yet from his cell he moved Russia at his will.

In truth, the more he seemed to withdraw the more eager became all to make him accept. Priests, nobles, people, besieged him with their supplications. He refused, and again refused, and for six weeks kept all Russia in suspense. Not until he saw before him the highest grandees and clergy of the realm on their knees, tears in their eyes, in their hands the relics of the saints and the image of the Redeemer, did he yield what seemed a reluctant assent, and come forth from his cell to accept that throne which was the chief object of his desires.

But Boris on the throne still resembled Macbeth. The memory of his crimes pursued him, and he sought to rule by fear instead of love. He endeavored, indeed, to win the people by shows and prodigality, but the powerful he ruled with a heavy hand, destroying all whom he had reason to fear, threatening the extinction of many great families by forbidding their members to marry, seizing the wealth of those he had ruined. The family of the Romanofs, allied to the line of Rurik, and soon to become pre-eminent in Russia, he pursued with rancor, its chief being obliged to turn monk to escape the axe. As monk he in time rose to the headship of the church.

The peasantry, who had before possessed liberty of movement, were by him bound as serfs to the soil. Thousands of them fled, and an insupportable inquisition was established, as hateful to the landowners as to the serfs. All this was made worse by famine and pestilence, which ravaged Russia for three years. And in the midst of this disaster the ghost of the slain Dmitri rose to plague his murderer. In other words, one who claimed to be the slain prince appeared, and avenged the murdered child, his story forming one of the most interesting tales in the history of Russia. It is this which we have now to tell.

About midsummer of the year 1603 Adam Wiszniowiecki, a Polish prince, angry at some act of negligence in a young man whom he had lately employed, gave him a box on the ear and called him by an insulting name.

"If you knew who I am, prince," said the indignant youth, "you would not strike me nor call me by such a name."

"Knew who you are! Why, who are you?"