VASILI III. succeeded his father and reigned in Moscow for nearly thirty years. From the historical point of view, he is unfortunate, as he followed a sovereign recognised as “Great,” whose conquests and innovations changed the destiny of Moscow, and was succeeded by a ruler, who, by his barbarities, won for himself the surname of “Terrible.” Vasili III. was not a warrior, and when he made war it was by preference against Slavonic peoples in the west. His chief delight was in building: churches, monasteries, city-walls, palaces—none of these came amiss to him; he constructed some of all, leaving Moscow much stronger, richer and more beautiful than he found it. He made the most of such services as the Italian masters could render, but in those times, all that was done in Moscow in any one age appears to have been executed at the command of the reigning prince. The houses of the nobility have all disappeared, and to the date of Vasili III. there appear to have been no founders of churches in Moscow, other than the princes. Not that these necessarily found the labour or material; as often as not a church was built from the proceeds of a fine laid upon some town or government at the pleasure of the prince.

Vasili was the first to build a stone palace in the Kremlin, that known as the Granovitaia, which is still standing. But Herberstein wrote that Vasili would not live in it, preferring his old palace of wood.

During his reign the Tartars got as near Moscow as the Sparrow Hills; there they sacked the royal palace and cellars containing large stores of mead. They became intoxicated with the liquor and advanced no further, but the leader obtained from Vasili a treaty in which he acknowledged the sovereignty of the Horde and promised yearly tribute. Vasili’s voievodes at Riazan, thinking the terms shameful, intercepted the returning Tartars, routed them, and got back the treaty. The following year, goaded to action, Vasili got an army together and went out towards the Khan, challenging him to battle. The Khan answered that he knew the way into Russia, and was not in the habit of asking his enemies when he should fight. In revenge for this insult, Vasili established a fair at Makharief, on the Volga; it ruined the mart of Kazan and was subsequently moved to Nijni-Novgorod, where it is still held yearly.

Vasili married first, Solomonia Saburov, but, as after twenty years of married life she had no son, he forced her to take the veil and married Helena Glinski, of Lithuania. This gave great offence to the Church; when he sent specially to the highest authority on the technical question, Mark, Patriarch of Jerusalem, is reported to have made the following remarkable prediction:—

Vasili disregarded the decision of the Church and married a most able and enlightened woman, who had the foresight to surround the Kitai Gorod with a wall of good masonry, and it is said, named that part of the town after a similarly designated enclosure in her native place. She bore Vasili two sons, Ivan, the Tsarevich, who was later the “terrible” Tsar, succeeding to the throne in 1533, when but three years of age. The younger son, Yuri, fared badly at the hands of his cruel brother.

KITAI GOROD, ILYINKA GATE
KITAI GOROD, ILYINKA GATE

The Moscow of the Princes was of wood, and the vestiges remaining are unimportant. Some of the later buildings, as the palace of the Terem and towers of the Kremlin wall, have been built in the style of the wooden erections they replaced; but it is not easy to picture Moscow as it was before Ivan’s Italian workmen raised their walls of brick and stone.

The town was of great size; in 1520 it contained 41,500 dwellings and 100,000 inhabitants. Its circumference was nearly twelve miles. The Grand Prince and his relations lived in the Kremlin; so did a few of the richest and most powerful nobles. In the Kitai Gorod lived the traders, the wealthy boyards and foreigners. The Bielo Gorod, “White” or Free Town, was occupied by boyards, merchants and privileged citizens; in the outer ring lived the artisans and labourers. The churches and chapels were numerous. Ivan Kalita built ten when there were already eighteen in the town, in 1337; in the reign of Vasili III. there were as many monasteries and nunneries, and upwards of three score churches and chapels.

The first dwelling in the Kremlin was the Prince’s habitation, originally called the Prince’s apartment, which served only as a pied À terre for the Prince when passing through. When Moscow became a place of residence then a house was put up near where the Great Palace now is. Then followed the usual dependences; including a prison or dungeon. Even at that early date the Russian carpenters were able craftsmen; how expert they afterwards became the wonderful wooden palaces and churches of Russia accurately demonstrate.

The Princes of Moscow were not extravagant, their palaces consisting of four chambers, en suite—the one most distant from the entrance was the sleeping-room; then, adjoining it, the oratory or private chapel; the room for living or affairs of the town, the anti-chamber; the vestibule; add kitchens and domestic rooms on a lower floor, and the early palaces of the Russian princes is complete.

Vasili III. required no more; his palace in the Kremlin consisted, on the bel Étage, of the vestibule, an anti-chamber, and two rooms. In a separate building, reached by a corridor or covered staircase, the bathroom and storerooms. Above the bel Étage, either a large open loft, or a belvedere pierced with windows on all sides and communicating with the terrace. The apartments reserved for the children, and for relations of the sovereign, were in separate buildings offering similar accommodation.

The roof was invariably ornamented with carved wood-work and with gay colours. The distinctive colour for the windows of the Terem was red. Further ornamentation consisted in shaping the roof conical, making it arched or in superposing cones on two arches; these were furnished with small grills and covered with shingles.

Each house had its private chapel, so the agglomeration of connected buildings that constituted a palace in the Kremlin in old days contained many chapels, and they now number more than a dozen. Apart from these private chapels within the palace, the Princes used the churches for the safer keeping of their treasure.

Ivan III. used the Church of St Lazarus now in the palace for his treasury; his wife, the Church of St John the Baptist, near the Borovitski Gate. To steal from the church was sacrilege, to take from the house of even the Tsar, simply robbery. The churches were used as treasuries also by the nobles, and doubtless much of the church-plate throughout Russia was originally deposited for safe keeping, whilst the owners went against Tartars or Livonians. All the churches were rich, and all, time after time, were spoiled by invaders; thus hiding-places were made in or near all the old churches.

Near the residence of the ruler were the very similar dwellings of the minor princes. In the days of Vasili III., of Grand Dukes even, for, as Moscow conquered other principalities, their former rulers were brought to the Kremlin and lived under the surveillance of the “Grand Prince of all the Russias,” rendering him such military service as he demanded. In time these nobles became an element of danger, intriguing for the succession and quarrelling among themselves for precedence. Vasili III. was the first ruler to treat them harshly and he spared none, not even his own near relatives if he thought they aspired to the succession. To render them less dangerous they were not employed as war-leaders, men of lower rank, the drujni of the Tsar and other princes being entrusted with command in the field and acting also as governors of provinces. Burned down time after time and usually put up again in wood, Moscow, with all its conflagrations, was nearly three centuries before it contained a dwelling-house of brick or stone, and more than two before enclosed with a wall. The reason being that stones of any kind were scarce in the neighbourhood of Moscow, whilst wood was plentiful.

With a palace in the Kremlin the rulers soon set to work to have palaces elsewhere. The one at the Sparrow Hills seems to have been most often resorted to in the early days, but with the advent to Russia of Sophia Paleologus and the introduction of western customs, not only was the single palace found inadequate, but Ivan’s successors all built dwellings in the forest or in villages near Moscow where they could go for sport, or when driven from town by fire, pestilence or revolt.

The most pressing need of the rulers of Moscow when they entered into relations with the west was a hall for entertaining visitors. It was for this purpose that the Granovitaia (chequered) Palace was constructed by the Italian workmen Ivan induced to work in Moscow for the then high wages of ten roubles a month. It was at this period that the Tsars began to evolve a special court etiquette. Previously anyone who could force his way through the throng by whom the princes were surrounded might speak with them. From the first the court etiquette, though not elaborate, was firmly insisted upon. Those who came to the palace had to dismount at some distance from the grand entrance, and approach it on foot. This accounts for the joy of Bowes, the English envoy, who rode right up to the grand entrance before dismounting. Those officers sent to meet foreign envoys had orders not to be the first to dismount; if the envoy knew the etiquette the parties on meeting would sit for hours facing each other, then agree to dismount simultaneously. Herberstein held back after throwing his feet out of the stirrups, so was last to touch earth, and he counts this a gain to his master. Common people and lower nobles were not allowed to pass the Tsar’s residence covered, and “must uncover as soon as it is within view.”

In addition to the gilded domes of its cathedrals, and the bright red roofs of its palaces, during the reign of Vasili III. Moscow commenced to accumulate other ornamental work quite as wondrous to the pilgrims from other Russian towns. Aleviso of Florence is unusually credited with the work upon the doors and lintels of the old churches within the palace, the porches of the Vossnesenski, Blagovieshchenski, and other Cathedrals within the Kremlin. The gilded and embossed metal work of the doors, the carved and bright-coloured columns and lintels, impressed visitors with the wealth of Moscow since the precious metals were so lavishly employed for merely decorative purposes. There are not many specimens of the work of this period still in existence, such as remain are now for the most part preserved within the palace instead of being, as formerly, exposed to the weather; but practically the whole of the wooden Moscow of the Princes was destroyed by fires during the reign of Ivan IV.

TEREM—ENTRANCE TO CHAPEL OF ST LAZARUS
TEREM—ENTRANCE TO CHAPEL OF ST LAZARUS