Part 10

The burden of his wrath fell upon the boyards. It may have been for the purpose of humiliating them and the Churchmen that he assembled (p. 118) delegates of those two classes to confer with representatives of the merchants of Moscow and Smolensk, about the war with Poland. Ivan addressed the assembly in person, and it was decided that the war should continue.

It was under his reign that British traders accidentally discovered the White Sea and the mouth of the Dwina. They came overland to Moscow where they were well received and secured several privileges. Ivan was anxious to conclude an offensive-defensive alliance with Elizabeth of England, and proposed an agreement to furnish each other with an asylum if either of them should be compelled to fly from the country through being defeated by an enemy or the rebellion of their subjects. Elizabeth did not fancy such an alliance, and declined the offer of an asylum, "finding," as she declared, "by the grace of God no dangers of the sort in her dominions." Ivan never ceased recurring to, and pleading for, such an agreement, thus showing his ever present suspicions.

After commercial intercourse was established with England, and British traders settled in Moscow, Ivan continued to show them his favor. He was himself the greatest merchant of Russia. The furs which he received from Siberia were sold to the foreign merchants at the fairs. His agents went into the provinces where they compelled the people to sell him furs, wax, honey, etc., at such prices as he chose to pay, and the foreign merchants had to buy them from him at a high price. He also bought the imported goods and sold them to Russian merchants. They were not permitted to buy from anybody else, until the goods (p. 119) of the czar were sold.

At the beginning of his reign, in 1551, Ivan was preparing an expedition to Kazan, and in June of the following year he descended the Volga and laid siege to that city. It was captured after a brave defense, when a number of the people were massacred and the rest sold as slaves. This conquest was followed by that of Astrakhan in 1554; the Volga from its source to its mouth was thereafter a Russian river. The Cossacks of the Don also submitted to him.

The European countries bordering on Russia dreaded that country's growing power. Ivan, after his coronation, sent to western Europe to engage a number of engineers and mechanics; these men were stopped on the road, and none of them ever reached Moscow. Sigismund of Poland even threatened to kill the British merchants on the Baltic, "because," he said, "if the Muscovite, who is not only our present adversary, but the eternal enemy of all free countries, should provide himself with guns, bullets, and munitions; and, above all, with mechanics who continue to make arms, hitherto unknown in this barbaric country, he would be a menace to Europe." Ivan, on the other hand, was equally anxious that the Russians should possess all the advantages of Europe's superior civilization. This, added to the inherited hostility between the two countries, caused many wars.

While Ivan was pursuing his conquests in the south, he was attacked by Gustavus Wasa, Sweden's famous king, who entertained the same fears as the King of Poland. The war ended by a commercial treaty whereby (p. 120) Swedish merchants might trade with India and China by way of Russia, and those of Russia with Holland, England, and France by way of Sweden. This war had scarcely ceased before envoys of the Livonian Order arrived to request a renewal of the truce. Ivan demanded tribute for Iourief which he claimed as his "patrimony." This was refused, and war was declared. It was owing to Ivan that this brotherhood was dissolved and its territory divided. In 1566, a truce was proposed by Poland.

It was on this occasion that he called the assembly referred to on page 116. The war continued. Ivan was attacked also by Sultan Selim II of Turkey, in 1569, and the Khan of the Crimea marched straight upon Moscow, set fire to the suburbs, and destroyed the capital except the Kremlin. He carried off a hundred thousand prisoners. (1571.) As he withdrew, he wrote to Ivan: "I burn, I ravage everything on account of Kazan and Astrakhan. I came to you and burned Moscow. I wished to have your crown and your head, but you did not show yourself; you declined a battle and you dare call yourself a Czar of Moscow! Will you live at peace with me? Yield me up Kazan and Astrakhan. If you have only money to offer me, it will be useless were it the riches of the world. What I want is Kazan and Astrakhan! As to the roads to your empire, I have seen them--I know them." The khan made another invasion the next year, 1572, but was defeated.

In the same year Sigismund Augustus II of Poland died. There was a party at Warsaw that proposed to elect Ivan's son, but the czar (p. 121) wanted Poland for himself. He failed in the attempt, and the Duke of Anjou, brother of the King of France, was chosen. He did not like the people and fled; his place was filled by Stephen Batory, Governor of Transsylvania, a young, capable, and energetic noble. Batory took in his service a number of trained German and Hungarian soldiers, and took Polotsk after a brave defense. He also captured several other towns, but was repulsed at Pskof.

Ivan sought the mediation of Pope Gregory XIII, and a truce was concluded in 1582; Ivan ceded Polotsk and all Livonia.

Ivan, in his manhood, was a man of violent temper. He was never seen without an iron-tipped staff, which he used freely and recklessly upon the people around him. Nobody, whatever his rank, was safe from corporal punishment. He killed his eldest son Ivan with a blow, and suffered from remorse ever afterward. He left a lasting impression upon Russia by his reforms. He made a law whereby neither church nor convents could acquire new lands. He was wonderfully well educated, considering the neglect of his early youth, and tolerant of religious opinions. A Presbyterian and a Lutheran church were built at Moscow with his consent, but in deference to the opposition of the people, they were removed to the suburbs. He was also the founder of the streltsi or national guard.

Ivan died in 1584, after a reign of forty-one years.

XIV--RUSSIA UNDER IVAN THE TERRIBLE. (p. 122)

The reign of Ivan the Terrible is remarkable, first, because it is the beginning of Russia as we know it in our time; and also because it occurred at a time when Great Britain was exploring the Atlantic, and preparing the way for the wonderful expansion of the English-speaking race, which culminated in the great North American Republic. It was under this reign, in 1558, that Russia's invasion of Asia began, and with it a movement eastward, which has not yet ceased.

It is interesting, therefore, to study the condition of the Russian people at this important period. Although, as we have seen, the Tartar yoke did not influence the people directly, because there was no intercourse between victor and vanquished, the indirect influence was great, owing to the adoption of Tartar habits or customs by the dukes and nobles, during their visits to the khan. During this time intercourse with Europe ceased; hence, in the 16th and 17th centuries, Russia was more Asiatic than European, although the Russians hated the victors. Who can say how much influence this has exerted upon Russia's conquests in Asia?

Among the old Slavs, the family was the unit from which the State was built up, and this was confirmed under the Tartar yoke. There is (p. 123) some similarity between the Empire of Russia and that of China, for there, too, the family is the unit. In both countries the Emperor is not only the master, he is also considered as the father and high priest of his people. Their persons and property are the emperor's, to do with as he pleases. But in Russia there was a nobility descended from the former dukes; in China there was none, except the descendant of Confucius. Yet in Russia these lords, many of whom traced their descent to Rurik, became in time the slaves of the czar. They prostrated themselves before him, as they had seen the courtiers of the khan do. When they presented a petition, they expressed it by the word tchelobitie, which means "beating of the forehead," showing that they performed what is known in China as the kowtow. In addressing the czar, they said, "Order me not to be chastised; order me to speak a word!" The Grand Dukes of Moscow considered their territory and the people on it, as their own private property. They had learned this from the khans. The palace, a mixture of oriental splendor and barbarism, showed the influence of the Tartars.

The people of Russia were divided into classes, the lowest of which were the slaves or kholop, prisoners of war, men who had sold themselves, or who were born in slavery. Above them were the peasants, born on the estate of a noble, but still known as free men. Then came the peasants who farmed the land of an owner, but these were few. Much of the land was owned by the several mirs or villages, but in the course of time they were assigned to gentlemen, who were able to serve in the army without pay, being supported by the revenues derived (p. 124) from these villages. Gradually these gentlemen looked upon the land of the mir as their own property, but the peasants never did lose the conviction that the mir was the real proprietor. In Ivan's time and later, the mir and not the individual, was held responsible for the tax to the czar, for the free labor furnished to the lord, and for his dues. The mir, therefore, was absolute master over every inhabitant of the village, and this power was vested in the starost. The peasant gradually descended into a beast of burden, who was not even a human being, but merely a productive force for the benefit of the State and of the lord.

A Russian town consisted, first of the kremlin, a fortress of wood which, when required, was defended by "men of the service"; then came the suburbs, built around the kremlin, and inhabited by the people. They were governed by a voievod or governor, appointed by the czar, or by a starost or mayor, elected by the nobles, priests, and privileged citizens. The principal duty of the citizens was to pay the taxes, and therefore they were forbidden to leave the city. Under the Czar Alexis, the penalty for such offense was death.

The merchants did not form a separate class. They are known in Russian as gosti or guests, thus showing that, notwithstanding the old and honorable record of Novgorod and Kief, the Tartar yoke and subsequent arbitrary rule of the grand dukes had ruined trade or left it in the hands of aliens. Ivan the Terrible called them the moujiks of commerce. Fletcher, an Englishman who spent many years in Moscow under Ivan IV, gives the following curious pen picture: "Often you will see them (p. 125) trembling with fear, lest a boyard should know what they have to sell. I have seen them at times, when they had spread out their wares so that you might make a better choice, look all around them,--as if they feared an enemy would surprise them and lay hands on them. If I asked them the cause, they would say to me, 'I was afraid that there might be a noble or one of the sons of boyards here: they would take away my merchandise by force.'"

The Russian women were kept secluded in women's quarters as they are in China, but they remained a member of their own family. A wife's duty was "to obey her husband as the slave obeys his master," and she was taught to think of herself as her master's property. He had the right to punish her as he did his children or his slaves. The priest Silvester advises the husband not to use sticks that are too thick or tipped with iron, nor to whip her before his men, but to correct her moderately and in private. No Russian woman dared object to being beaten. A Russian proverb says: "I love you like my soul, and I dust you like my jacket."

The men wore oriental tunics or robes, and a long beard; the women painted their faces. Ivan the Terrible said that to shave the beard was "a sin that the blood of all the martyrs could not cleanse. Was it not to defile the image of man created by God?"

There was a general belief in magic and witchcraft; sorcerers were burned alive in a cage. Ivan, although in advance of his age, was not free from superstition. The art of medicine was, of course, still in its infancy, and those who practiced it were in constant danger (p. 126) of their lives, because if they did not cure a patient, they might suffer for it.

Both the nobles and the people were addicted to the vice of drunkenness. No one paid any attention when a person, rich or poor, young or old, fell down in the street from the effects of drink. This is what the priests said of this vice: "My brethren, what is worse than drunkenness? You lose memory and reason like a madman who does not know what he is doing. The drunkard is senseless; he lies like a corpse. If you speak to him he does not answer. Think of his poor soul which grows foul in its vile body which is its prison.... To drink is lawful and is to the glory of God, who has given us wine to make us rejoice."

The Metropolitan of Moscow, until a Patriarch was appointed, was supposed to be the head of the Church, but the czar held the real power. There were two classes of priests: The Black Clergy lived as monks in monasteries, some of which were exceedingly wealthy; they were forbidden to marry, and the bishops were appointed from among them. The White Clergy lived among the people and were compelled to marry. Most of them were grossly ignorant. The same Englishman quoted before, Mr. Fletcher, says of these priests: "As for exhorting or instructing their flock, they have neither the habit of it nor the talent for it, for all the clergy are as profoundly ignorant of the Word of God as of all other learning."

The revenues of the Empire consisted of a tax on every sixty measures of corn; of a house-tax, or tax on every fire; the customhouse (p. 127) dues, and what remained of the municipal taxes after paying expenses; of a tax on public baths; the farming out of lands belonging to the crown; the fines and confiscations in the "Court of the Brigands;" and finally of the tribute paid by thirty-six towns and their landed possessions "belonging to the Crown."

The Courts of Justice belonged to the Middle Ages; tortures were applied similar to those employed by the Spanish Inquisition. A wife who murdered her husband "was buried alive up to her neck." Heretics were burned at the stake; sorcerers were burned in an iron cage, and coiners had liquid metal poured down their throats. A noble who killed a moujik was fined or sometimes whipped; but he might kill as many slaves as he pleased, because they were his property.

The Russian infantry, so famous under the early Norsemen, had given way to cavalry, in imitation of the Tartars. The Imperial Guard was composed of 8,000 young nobles. The "men-at-arms" were mounted, but received no pay beyond the revenue of their lands, which they held in return for their military service. The army numbered about 80,000, and, with a levy among the peasants, could be brought up to 300,000. There was, besides, the irregular cavalry of the Don Cossacks, and of the Tartars. Such infantry as there was, consisted of peasants from the crown lands, churches, and convents; the national guard, and foreign soldiers or officers.

XV--FEODOR, THE LAST OF RURIK'S DESCENDANTS. (p. 129)

Ivan the Terrible left two sons, Feodor, the son of Anastasia Romanof, and Dmitri, a child, the son of his seventh wife. Feodor was neither a strong-minded nor a very able man. He was married to Irene Godounof, and, following the usual custom, his wife's relations held the principal offices of the government. Gradually the czar's authority passed into the hands of Prince Boris Godounof, Irene's brother, a very ambitious and unscrupulous man. Wizards had foretold that Boris would be czar, but that his reign would last only seven years, and he did all he could to aid his destiny.