Wirt Gerrare

“A right Scythian, full of readie wisdom, cruell, bloudye, mercilesse.”—Horsey.

MOST conspicuous of all the monuments of the past Moscow contains, is the great weird building familiarly known as the church of Vasili Blajenni; as monstrous and impressive is the era that produced it. The half century during which Ivan the Terrible reigned over Muscovy is a unique period in the history of Russia. And not that of Russia only, for in no country at any time have so many and diverse outrages been perpetrated at one man’s command. Disasters resulting from human ambition and folly sully the history of every land, but all histories are spotless in comparison with that of Moscow under its first Tsar—a creature of unparalleled ferocity and inconceivable wickedness.

Ivan was the son of the crafty Vasili Ivanovich in his dotage; of Helena Glinski, a fiery-natured Lithuanian woman, passionate as a Spaniard, reckless as a Tartar. But if his parentage was unpromising his upbringing was worse. He and his mother had many enemies, the members of princely houses in vassalage in Moscow but with aspirations to the throne. These men, mostly relations of the Tsar, were insistent upon the rules of precedence, both for the gratification of their own vanity, and as of possible importance in the event of a Tsar dying without direct heir. For this reason all the Tsars were merciless towards their relatives on their father’s side, and looked for help from the relations of their mother and wife, who had most to gain from the succession being maintained in a direct line.

Helena, as regent, appears to have governed well. She did not marry again, thus the rights of Ivan and his brother Yuri were not endangered by her. Her lover, Kniaz Telepniev, for a time kept at bay the rival factions of the more powerful nobles, and possibly was instrumental in thwarting the plots of the Glinski. At Helena’s command two of her relatives were executed for conspiring against the infant Tsar. She enclosed the Kitai Gorod with a wall of stone; improved the defences of Moscow in other ways, gave the people a new coinage, founded monasteries, built churches, and continued the policy of the rulers of Moscow. Five years after her husband’s death she died suddenly, of poison it is said, and the rumour may be credited.

In 1538, Ivan, then in his eighth year, and his brother Yuri, his junior by eighteen months, were left to the mercies of the most powerful factions about the court. They were neglected; Ivan himself said of this period, “we two were treated as strangers: even as the children of beggars are served. We were ill clothed, cold, and often went hungry.”

Jealous of each other the courtiers would not allow the princes to attach themselves to anyone. If Ivan felt drawn to anyone, or any person took notice of him, all the others combined to separate the two.

The Shooiskis were then the most powerful family, and Shooiski treated Ivan with scant consideration. His tutors encouraged him to ride at full speed through the streets and try to knock down the old and feeble; they allowed him to have animals tortured for his diversion, and laughed with him at their plight when flung from the roof of the palace. Ivan learned to read, and spelled through all the books he could obtain. From these old chronicles,—from those of the Kings of Israel, to the doings of his own ancestors—he seems to have obtained the idea of the powers of sovereignty. A close observer he noticed that although ordinarily he was treated as of little account, when any act of state had to be done he was always summoned to give the command. Young as he was, Ivan knew his importance. One day, when he was thirteen years old, he went out sporting with Gluiski, and Gluiski incited him to repress the arrogance of Shooiski. Ivan did it by having Shooiski pulled out into the street and worried to death there and then by Gluiski’s hounds.

From that time Ivan treated all with cruelty. In his eighteenth year he arrogated to himself the title of Tsar—the name by which all great rulers were designated in the old Slavonic books he had read. In the same year, 1547, he married Anastasia Romanof, and in that year the inhabitants of Moscow, tired of his cruelties, repeatedly fired the town. In April the merchants’ stores were fired, probably by robbers intent upon gain; the fire spread, destroying the stores of the Tsar, the monastery of the Epiphany, and most of the houses in the Kitai Gorod. On the 20th of the same month the streets of the artisans along the Yauza suffered, and on the 21st June, during a high wind, a fire started on the far side of the Neglinnaia, in the Arbat, and this spread to the Kremlin and destroyed there the whole of the wooden buildings. The inhabitants could save nothing, and the night was made more hideous by frequent explosions as the fire reached one powder magazine and another. The palaces, the tribunals, the treasuries, armouries, warehouses, all were destroyed. All books, deeds, pictures and ikons were lost, with few exceptions. The metropolitan, the aged Macarius, was praying in the cathedral and refused to leave; he was forcibly removed, placed in a basket and lowered from the Kremlin wall near the Tainitski gate; the rope broke, he fell to the ground, and was taken more dead than alive to the Novo Spasski Monastery. There was not time to remove the Holy ikons. The fire after destroying the roof of the cathedral burnt out, and the celebrated ikon of the Virgin of Vladimir was saved.

The ruins smouldered for a week. Seventeen hundred perished in the flames. The Tsar withdrew to the Sparrow Hills so as not to see the distress of the people. The survivors, their beards burnt, their faces blackened, fought among the embers for the vestiges of what had been theirs. Church and court alike forsook the spot.

An earnest priest, Sylvester, forced himself upon the terrified Tsar, upbraided him for his excesses, and exhorted him to lead a better life. Ivan, always an arrant coward, now completely unnerved, at once came under the influence of the priest. He took as his counsellor one Adashef, a man of good repute and some wisdom. For thirteen years he and Sylvester administered the law and dictated the policy of the country. In Anastasia they had an able assistant and firm friend. Their first act was directed towards limiting the power of the Tsar; at their behest he called together an assembly of the people to advise him. They compiled a code of laws, the Sudebnik, and the Stoglaf, this last the decrees of the council (Zemstvo) held at Moscow in 1551 and shortly afterwards Sylvester issued his “Domostroi”—household law, teaching how to live as Godfearing men and prove good husbandmen. The Tsar, earnest in his new rÔle, paid great attention to his spiritual advisers. When twenty-one he exhorted them to “Thunder in mine ears the voice of God that my soul may live.”

In 1552 he was persuaded to lead an expedition against the Tartars of Kazan. The army was strong and well equipped. With wonderful foresight, a neighbouring town had been well stocked with provisions and was used as a base for the besiegers. After a stubborn resistance Ivan’s army of 150,000 took the town, and slaughtered the defenders. On this occasion Ivan is said to have displayed considerable courage, and when he saw the bodies of the slain Tartars, to have regretted their death, saying, “for though of another faith they are human beings even as ourselves.”

Too soon he returned to Moscow, and the newly-conquered province rebelled. Ivan then was very ill, “a fever so great all thought him at the point of death.” Ivan thought his last hour was at hand and summoned the nobles to take the oath of fealty to his son Dmitri, whom he nominated his successor. Some refused, others hesitated: Zakharin-Yurief alone, was earnest and ready in his allegiance. He was a near kinsman of the Tsarina and so, more than any, was interested in the welfare of Dmitri. Others intrigued for the succession. The Tsar lying helpless on his couch heard the boyards and counsellors discussing their plans in the adjoining apartment. Even Sylvester and his trusted counsellor Alexis Adashef, favoured the succession of Vladimir, Ivan’s cousin.

Ivan recovered, but for a time he acted as though he had forgotten what he overheard on his sick bed. He never forgave. His wife, Anastasia, also withdrew her friendship from those who had opposed her son’s succession.

Then Ivan made a visit to the monastery at Bielo Ozersk—the White Lake—and there he saw the aged Vassian, the old counsellor of his father, who gave him advice contrary to that so earnestly and frequently dinned into his ears by Sylvester and Adashef. “If you wish to become absolute monarch,” said Vassian, “seek no counsellor wiser than yourself. Never take advice from any: instead, give it. Command, never obey. Then will you become a sovereign in all truth.”

This advice pleased Ivan. “My father himself,” he answered, “could not have given wiser counsel.”

Ivan could wait for his triumph over his associates. He went now to the Volga again, completed the conquest of Kazan, and his troops pressed on as far as Astrakhan, which they took after slight resistance.

In Moscow Ivan kept the grand-dukes, princes, and boyards his nearest relatives; his voievodes, or military leaders, were men of good birth, but with no claim on the succession. Under the administration of Adashef, the outlying parts of the Tsar’s dominions were so effectually governed that when the English ships first appeared on the White Sea, Chancellor was not allowed to trade, or penetrate into the interior of the country, until the permission of the Tsar had been received from Moscow.

In 1560 Anastasia died, and Ivan fretted under the constant surveillance of Sylvester. He was always at hand, entreating the Tsar to shew mercy, and to live straightly. Both Sylvester and Adashef retired within a short time of Anastasia’s death. For bad generalship in Lithuania, Adashef was imprisoned in the fortress of Dorpat, where he died shortly afterwards. Sylvester was ready enough to send the Tsar and his Russian armies to war against the Tartars and infidels; he opposed wars with Livonia, Lithuania and Poland, where Ivan was particularly desirous of extending his dominion.

On the withdrawal of these counsellors again commenced the murders and massacres in which Ivan delighted. Historians divide these into seven cycles; it is a purely arbitrary division—with the exception of the thirteen years 1547-1560, during which he was wedded to Anastasia and engaged in foreign wars, the whole of his long reign was given to terrorising his subjects.

Obolenski was the first noble killed by Ivan himself; Repnin was murdered whilst at his devotions in church; another was slain simply because he remonstrated with the Tsar for such a display of cruelty. Ivan always used the hour of victory to exterminate foes, and he now relentlessly hunted down all his past advisers and their friends.

He was determined on absolute supremacy.

“To shew his soveraintie over the lives of his subjects, Ivan in his walks, if he disliked the face or person of any man he met by the way, or that looked at him, would command his head to be struck off. There and then the thing was done, and the head cast before him.”

Dismayed, some of his nobles fled to the west; among them was Kniaz Kourbski, who, not content simply to take service under Sigismund, acquainted the Tsar by letter with the fact. Kniaz Vasili Chibanov was the bearer. Ivan received him on the Krasnoe Kriltso, and there, with his sharp staff, pinned to the floor the foot of Chibanov, who never stirred a muscle during the whole time the long letter was read aloud. Then Chibanov was put to the torture, to obtain particulars of the flight of Kourbski, and the names of his partisans in Moscow; but Chibanov confessed not a word, and in the midst of the most horrible torment praised his master, and counted it a joy to suffer thus for him.

Generally Ivan studied to keep on good terms with the common people—whom he feared; by them he was worshipped. Macarius, the metropolitan, complained that “He who blasphemes his maker, meets with forgiveness amongst men, he who reviles the Tsar is sure to lose his head.” Ivan chose as his companions the worst people whom he could find. At one time he withdrew from Moscow, taking umbrage at the prelates, still too powerful to be touched. The people clamoured for his return.

This was gratifying to Ivan. He consented to govern again if the Church would not exercise its prerogative of mercy, and would leave him to do his will. His return was followed by murders and outrages worse than before. Randolph, who in 1568, was in Muscovy on an embassy from England, with which country Ivan wished to be on the best of terms, was not allowed to enter Moscow, because, Count Yuri Tolstoi thinks, Ivan wished to keep from him the knowledge of these massacres. Randolph wrote to Cecil:—

During the third cycle of Ivan’s outrages, Philip, the metropolitan, in 1568, dared to upbraid the Tsar. Ivan with a crowd of his irreligious followers, disguised in the cloaks they wore when sallying forth to rapine and outrage, repaired to the Uspenski Sobor for a blessing before starting on their fearful work. The metropolitan refused to recognise Ivan so clad when called upon for his benediction.

Ivan enraged, stuck his staff into the ground, and swore to be as bad as Philip described him. Vasili Pronski was the first to suffer in the murders that followed closely upon this scene, but Ivan did not forget Philip. One of the soldiers was ordered to present himself before the metropolitan and wear the Tartar skull cap; the metropolitan noticed this irreverence, and turned to the leader for a command that the man should uncover. In the meantime the man did so, and Philip was accused of lying. The boyard, Alexis Basmanov, with a troop of armed men and having the Tsar’s fiat in his hand, arrested Philip whilst officiating at High Mass in the Uspenski Sobor, and read out that by the decree of the clergy, Philip was deposed from his high office. The people were surprised and stupefied. The soldiers seized Philip, tore his vestments from him, and chased him from the church with besoms. He was first taken to the monastery of the Epiphany, next to an obscure prison where he was loaded with irons. Whilst there, the head of his well-beloved nephew, Ivan Borisovich, was thrown to him. A crowd gathered near the prisoner’s cell, and the people spake with each other of his goodness. It frightened Ivan, and he had Philip removed to the monastery at Tver, where he was subsequently strangled by Skutarov on the Tsar’s journey through the town on the way to Novgorod.

As a condition for his consent to reside in Moscow, Ivan stipulated for a bodyguard of his own choosing. These men, the Öpritchniki, that is, “picked” fellows, became the terror of Moscow. Selected for their readiness to obey, their bodily strength and lack of morals, they recognised no master but Ivan, and by him were privileged to rob and slay the people as they wished, providing they were at hand to kill anyone in particular whom he might want out of the way. They carried bludgeons with heads carved to represent those of dogs, at the saddle bow, and a small besom at the other end, the “speaking symbols” of their intention to hunt down rebels and sweep Russia clean.

By their callousness and brutality they, on many occasions, distinguished themselves in a manner that gladdened Ivan, but at no time did their excesses excel their performance on the march to Novgorod. Ivan, very suspicious of treason, doubted the fidelity of Novgorod, a town with known predilections for freedom, and inclined to favour the more enlightened rule of the western kings than the Russian autocrat. A hired traitor placed a forged letter behind an image in Novgorod Church, and disclosed the plot to Ivan, whose agents found the compromising letter, which contained overtures to the Lithuanians; Ivan started to subdue the town. The Öpritchniks preceded him. Klin, a thriving town near Moscow, was sacked; the inhabitants of Tver were spoiled, and many murdered. On their way the advance guard killed all whom they met, lest any should know where the Tsar was. Villages and towns were annihilated. Monks had to find twenty roubles each as ransom; those who could not were thrashed from morning until night, then, when Ivan arrived on the scene, were flogged to death.

On his arrival at Novgorod he was entertained by the people; during the banquet served to him and his followers he gave a loud cry—the signal for his fellows to begin the slaughter. The Tsar and his son went to an enclosure specially reserved for the torture of their victims, and with their lances prodded those who were not quickly enough dragged to the place of torment. Chroniclers say that from 500 to 1000 were slain in cold blood before him each day of his stay. Some were burned, some racked to death, others drowned in the Volkhof, run in on sledges or thrown in from the bridge—soldiers in boats spearing those who swam. Infants were empaled before the eyes of their mothers, husbands butchered along with their wives. Novgorod, at that time larger and of greater commercial importance than Moscow, was so injured that she has never since acquired the rank of even a third-rate town. On leaving it, Ivan called together a few starving survivors, and commanded them to obey the laws and fear him. He went on to Pskov, where the town was saved by the boldness of a half-witted hermit, who offered Ivan raw meat on a fast-day, and threatened him that he would be struck by lightning if any citizen of Pskov was injured whilst Ivan remained in the town. An accident to his horse seemed to Ivan an earnest of the “Holy-man’s” power, and he left the town precipitately.

According to Horsey, Ivan at this time had a Tartar army with him, and tried to reduce other towns in Livonia. At Reval, men and women carried water by night to repair the breaches in the walls made by his cannon during the day, and Ivan, losing six thousand men, in the end had to retreat in shame. Losing more men before Narva, he put in execution there “the most bloody and cruellest massacre that ever was heard of in any age,” giving the spoil of the town to his Tartars. Following the custom of his country, the prisoners of war were all brought as slaves to Moscow, many dying on the way, some, including Scotch and English soldiers of fortune in the pay of the Swedes, thrown into prison in Moscow and there subsequently tortured and executed.

These excursions of Ivan and his men into distant parts of his dominions afforded the Muscovites some respite from his attentions. The English then there were much impressed by the cruelties of Ivan, though themselves escaping. Jerom Horsey thus describes Ivan’s invasion of Novgorod:—

With the spoil brought from Novgorod was the “Great Bell of Novgorod” which had so often called its burghers to assemble for the defence of the town. Ivan was determined that the tocsin should never again be heard over the fallen city. The bell he caused to be hanged in the turret on the Kremlin wall near the Spasski Gate, where for long it was used as the alarm bell of Moscow, but subsequently served as metal when the great bell in Ivan Veliki was recast.

Shortly after his return from Novgorod he entered upon his fourth cycle of massacres. The prisoners were executed in batches before the Spasski Gate. Horsey was instrumental in getting the lives of many spared, and they were settled in a suburb of Moscow where they lived at peace with the citizens but were still subject to attacks from the Öpritchniks. Ivan found other traitors among the boyards and princes, for his favourites of to-day were the victims of the morrow.

Sometimes Ivan’s vagaries were less gruesome, possessing even a comic aspect:—

“He once went in disguise into a village and sought shelter. The only man who would offer it was the one worst off, and at the time sore beset. Ivan promised to return, and did so with a great company and many presents, acting also as godson to the man’s child, whose birth he had witnessed. Then his followers burned all the other dwellings in the village to teach the owners charity and try how good it was to lie out of doors in winter.”

“When Ivan went on his tours he was met by the householders and presented with the best they had. A poor shoemaker knowing not what to give, except a pair of sandals, was reminded that a large turnip in his garden was a rarity, and so presented that to Ivan, who took the present so kindly that he commanded a hundred of his followers to buy sandals of the man at a crown a pair. A boyard seeing him so well paid, made account by the rule of proportion to get a much greater reward by presenting Ivan with a fine horse, but Ivan, suspecting his intention, rewarded him with the turnip the bootmaker had given.”

“He it was who nailed a French ambassador’s hat to his head. Sir Jeremy Bowes, the English ambassador, soon after came before Ivan, put on his hat, and cocked it before him, at which Ivan sternly demanded how he durst do so, having heard how he chastised the French ambassador. Sir Jeremy answered, ‘I am the ambassador of the invincible Queen of England, who does not veil her bonnet, nor bare her head to any prince living. If any of her ministers shall receive any affront abroad, she is able to avenge her own quarrel.’

“‘Look you at that!’ cried Ivan to his boyards, ‘Which of you would do so much for me, your master?’”

He was probably not acting nor scoffing when he acted the part of abbot, and made his companions friars of the house at Alexandrovski—to which he retreated for upwards of a year at a time when he mistrusted the people of Moscow and feared for his life and his throne. Ivan regularly summoned to mass this strange company, all clad like brothers of a monastery, and himself officiated. His prostrations were no sham, for his forehead bore the marks of its severe knockings on the floor, but in the middle of a mass he would pause to give some order for the murder of his victims, or the pillage of the rich. The mornings were spent in religious exercise—the rest of the day and much of the night in the foulest orgies and the perpetration of fearful outrages in the dungeons and torture chambers of his residence.

At all times the boyards durst do nothing without him, and waited upon him duteously wherever he might go. His voievodes kept the newly-conquered provinces in subjection; others carried the war into the country of his enemies and brought fresh lands under his dominion. Yermak, an outlaw, conquered Siberia and made of it a gift to the Tsar. Anthony Jenkinson, on behalf of the English Russia Company, conveyed their goods from Archangel to Astrakhan; there fitted out a fleet for trading on the shores of the Caspian, and made a successful war on the Shah of Persia.

In 1571 Ivan’s voievodes failed him. They were unable, or unwilling, to oppose the Tartar horde and it reached Moscow. There the enemy pillaged and burnt the town, destroying the stores, houses and buildings outside the Kremlin. The town suffered worse than in the great conflagrations of 1547, but the Tartars, satisfied with the spoil, withdrew. They subsequently sent envoys to Ivan and these were at once imprisoned. Kept in dark rooms, ill-treated, almost starved,—they endured; made light of the hardships; scorned their guardians. At last an audience was granted them.

Ivan had to send his own emissaries to the Tartars and the Khan kept them imprisoned seven years, and in other ways showed his contempt for the ruler of Moscow. But for Ivan’s newly-found friends the English, his enemies in east and west would have conquered him. The English, much to the disgust of Swedes and Poles, supplied Ivan with artillery and small arms; improved engines of war, much gunpowder, and showed his men how to use them—Russians are not slow to learn.

In 1548 Ivan sent John Schlitte to Germany to enlist foreign artisans for his service. Attracted by the high remuneration offered, a hundred were willing to accompany Schlitte back to Moscow, but the Governments, anticipating danger to their territory if the Russ became enlightened, refused permission. Only a few determined stragglers reached Russian territory. The first printers in Russia were encouraged for a time, then, for their own safety, had hurriedly to seek exile.

For Moscow Ivan did little: twice during his reign the town was destroyed by fire. After the first he built himself a new palace of wood within the Kremlin; later he had another constructed outside, between the Nikitskaia and the Arbat. For a long time he lived in neither, preferring a wretched dwelling in a far off village, whence he believed he could, at need, escape unobserved to England if any of his subjects took up arms against him.

The monument of his reign is the church in the Grand Place. Dedicated to the “Intercession of the Holy Virgin,” it was built at Ivan’s command, and at the expense of Kazan, to commemorate the conquest of that town, which fell on the first of October 1552. Commenced in 1553, it was completed six years later and consecrated by the Metropolitan Macarius on the day of its patron saint.

The name of its architect is unknown. Tradition asserts that Ivan, to make sure that this church should be “the crowning effort of his wonderful genius,” put out his eyes. There is no evidence in support of this story, and it is unlikely that Ivan would have done a thing so usual.

Many writers have asserted that this fantastic edifice is a mixture of the Gothic, Moorish, Indian, Byzantine and other styles of architecture. As a matter of fact it is but an exaggeration of the Russian style, an agglomeration of domes, towers and spires, one or other of which may be found on many buildings in “wooden Russia.” In the chapter on “Ecclesiastical Moscow” the reader will find further information on this point. It appears to embody the salient features of many styles, eastern and western, and the whole, if neither beautiful nor magnificent is strikingly imposing and original. Unlike other Russian churches the belfry instead of being at the west end, is at the east. Nine of its chapels are each surmounted by a lofty roof differing from the others.

The central one, that dedicated to the Virgin, has a high tower and wonderful spire, the paintings on its internal converging sides adding to its extravagant proportions. The other eight chapels on this floor surround the spire and are covered with the usual arched vault supporting longer or shorter cylindrical towers, surmounted with cupolas of different forms and sizes. One, has apparently large facets; another bristles like the back of a hedgehog; a third bears closest resemblance to a pine-apple, a fourth to a melon; a fifth is in folds, another has spiral gonflements—none are plain. A covered gallery extends from north to south, with roofed and spired stairways leading up to the church level, and a narrow passage and outside wall enclose the remaining chapels. The quaint belfry with its Russo-Gothic spire and bright roofing, being unlike aught else, is in keeping with the general design. Outside, the central dome is brightly gilt, the others are painted in gaudy colours, and the whole of the exterior is decorated with crude patterns in strong contrast. Its design is bizarre; its colour is motley; the two both harmonise and contrast—the whole fascinates. It is at once both a nightmare and a revelation. Like an impressionist’s picture it rivets attention by apparent strength and seeming originality. It cannot be forgotten, yet it repels by its egregious fatuity. It is the over-inflated frog at the instant of explosion. It is not even known by its correct name: covering the remains of a

VASILI BLAJENNI
VASILI BLAJENNI

mendicant monk “idiotic for Christ’s sake,” its familiar appellation, “Blessed Willie,” is derived from him. He it was who so often interposed his person between the Tsar and the objects of his wrath. He upbraided Ivan; threatened him with all manner of disasters, but neither Ivan nor his opritchniks ever hurt the naked body of the old beggar. He used to address the Tsar familiarly, “Ivashka” (Bad Jacky); when the Tsar offered him money he let it fall to the floor, blew on his fingers, said the coins burned, and asked Ivan why he had his gold from hell. Then he would tell Ivan that on his forehead were already growing the horns of a goat—that he was becoming a devil really—then hold him up to the ridicule of the court and the people—and Ivan, enraged, dared not strike him down himself or order anyone to do so. Now, the wonderful monument of Ivan’s time is called by the name of the man he feared; it is he the orthodox remember; it is his church; they honour and revere him. Later another popular prophet, “Ivan the Idiot” was buried there by order of the Tsar Theodore: his chapel adjoins that of “Blessed Willie,” below the level of the church itself at the east end.

The church has not much history; the Poles plundered it, Napoleon ordered his generals to “Destroy that Mosque”—instead they quartered themselves there. It has been many times repaired; was reconsecrated in 1812 and remains, what it is, a striking memorial of a fearful era.

As a place of worship it is now but little used. Its architecture is not of the kind to inspire lofty thoughts, or draw any nearer to God. Its associations are all unpleasant, reminiscent of the excesses of Ivan, the weaknesses of his immediate successors. Worse, it lacks sincerity: intuitively one knows that such a building cannot shelter truth or engender hope. To uncover at its portal seems a mockery; to connect it with aught that is pure and Holy, a rank blasphemy.

Glittering in bright sunlight, gay with colour, resplendent with reflections from a glorious sky, it seems only like a kaleidoscopic flash on a variegated canvas. To know Vasili Blajenni, the visitor should walk round it in the dusk of the evening, in the gloom of a winter’s day, or, in summer, in that half-light of midnight that there does duty for darkness. Standing in the shadow of the Kremlin wall, on soil saturated fathoms deep with the blood of innocent martyrs, examine the building closely and call to memory the people by whom and for whom it was produced. Then and then only may the conception of this fungus-like excrescence seem possible, and Vasili Blajenni stand revealed as an expression of inordinate vanity, uncontrolled passion, insatiate lust. Like attributes without a soul—weird, monstrous, horrible. No fitting memorial of any man, yet not out of character with what is known of him they called Ivan the Terrible.

The clergy alone possessed any power besides the Tsar; but the Church was unable to coerce him or to save the people. Obedience to those in power it had inculcated so long and thoroughly that the Russians never attempted reprisals or lifted a hand against the Tsar. Even a voievod, speaking to Ivan, had his ears sliced off there and then by the Tsar himself, and he not only bore it patiently, but thanked the Tsar for his attention. The people, debased, servile, frightened, could not help the Church—and soon the clergy could not help themselves. Ivan, who was fond of the semblance of justice, after his expedition north appointed a baptized Tartar, one Simeon Bekbulatov, to be Tsar in his place, then himself abdicated. But he took care to make Simeon do as he wished, and he kept the power. The people obeyed Simeon, to a certain extent, but the Tsar’s chief object in this was to legalise his seizure of ecclesiastical revenues. Simeon made certain agreements, but not having made those in force, which had been recognised by Ivan, he abrogated them. Then Ivan dismissed Simeon amidst the thanksgiving and rejoicing of his people, and with tears in his own eyes, the arch-hypocrite again took his seat on the throne. But the old agreements were no longer in force; then Ivan declared null and void certain acts of Simeon, and so between the two, secured all the Church properties he wanted, and deprived the clergy of many privileges. Ivan was a great chess-player; his strategy as Tsar shows how his knowledge of the game benefited him.

Ivan put to death his cousin Vladimir for no crime; his mother Euphrosyne, when living in seclusion in a convent, he dragged forth and drowned in the Cheksna. His own sister-in-law, the widow of his early playmate Yuri, was also killed for no other reason than in the seclusion of the convent she had shed tears over the victims of the despot’s fury.

The boyard Rostevski, after imprisonment, was marched naked in very cold weather until the Volga was reached. His guards said that there they must water their horses. “Ah,” said Rostevski, “full well I know I have to drink of that water too,” and straightway he went to his death.

Seerkon had no other crime than that he was rich. A rope was placed round his waist and he was hauled from one side of a river to the other and back again until half-drowned, then placed in a bath of hot oil and torn to pieces.

Ivan kept many bears, and delighted to turn them out when savage amongst helpless people. Another diversion was to clothe men in bear skins, then set trained dogs to tear them to pieces. He poured spirits over the heads of delegates, then set their beards on fire. On one occasion his men brought a lot of women of Moscow, and stripping all naked presented them to Ivan—he took a few and gave the remainder to the perpetrators of this outrage. Prince Chernialef he had grilled in an enormous frying-pan; hundreds died on the rack.

Another boyard impaled, during the long hours he remained conscious, never ceased calling upon God to forgive the Tsar. On one occasion, during a time of great scarcity, Ivan caused it to be made known that at a certain hour alms would be distributed at his palace. A great crowd of needy people assembled, and seven hundred were promptly knocked on the head by the opritchniks and their bodies thrown into the lake; a death so merciful, Horsey terms it “a deed of charity.”

Ivan forced father to kill son, and son father. His two once favourites, the Gluiskis, also suffered; the son being beheaded as he reverently raised the head just struck from his father’s body. On that same day another prince was impaled and four others beheaded. Many were hung up by the feet, hacked with knives, and whilst still living, plunged into a cauldron of scalding water. On one occasion, eight hundred women were drowned together. The opritchniks, of whom at one time Ivan had seven hundred, killed scores of people daily.

He himself plotted against the life of his own son and gave “Maliuta” (Skutarov) orders to kill him. Kniaz Serebrenni saved him. This is the subject of Count A. Tolstoi’s best known novel and of an old ballad which recounts how the Tsar got all the boyards together to say a mass for the dead Tsarevich and in mourning, “or all I will boil in a cauldron.” Nikita Serebrenni, hiding the Tsarevich behind the door, enters in ordinary raiment and is questioned by the Tsar, who when he knows that the Tsarevich is safe, rejoices greatly and offers Serebrenni half the kingdom as a reward. Serebrenni answers:—

With the aid of his foreign physician, Bomel, Ivan substituted poison for the knife. At his table the craven boyards would gather trembling; take from him and drain the cup they knew to be poisoned. No wonder Horsey called them “a base and servile people, without courage.” In his turn “Elizius Bomelius” suffered a cruel death. When Theodorof was accused of aspiring to the crown, Ivan dressed him in the royal insignia, seated him on the throne and did him mock homage; then struck him dead, saying that it was he who exalted the humble and put down the mighty from their seats.

His people all shrank from him: the merchants hid their goods if he, or any of his spies, were in their neighbourhood; none dared be counted rich. He robbed any and all. Even the English merchants, whose good esteem he prized, were forced to furnish him with what he wished, on credit, and were never paid. They dared not offer their wares to any, unless he had first been afforded an opportunity to purchase—at his own price.

His palace at Alexandrovski was a wondrous building; all spires, domes, quaint gables, and corridors—as unlike all other palaces as Vasili Blajenni is unlike other churches. Of his enormities there, none may write. After his death, it was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.

He was rough, uncouth, unfeeling. He emptied scalding soup over one of his favourites and laughed at the sufferer’s contortions. Taking offence at a remark of one of his jesters, he ran his knife into the little fellow’s chest; then called a doctor, telling him he had used his fool roughly. The doctor told him the man was dead. Ivan, remarking that he was a poor jester after all, went away to his revels.

A straightforward old boyard, Morozof, a hard fighter and an upholder of the rights of his order, for disputing with the favoured Boris Godunov about precedence, was exiled. After some years he was again summoned to court, and Ivan made of him a buffoon. Count Alexis Tolstoi uses the story in his romance “Prince Serebrenni.”

His son, the Tsarevich Ivan, wished to lead an army against his father’s enemies in Lithuania. In this offer the jealous Tsar saw an attempt to gain popularity. He turned on Ivan savagely and struck him repeatedly with the iron-shod “sceptre” he always carried; the last blow knocked the young man senseless. He fell to the ground, and the Tsar, now frightened, did his utmost to save him, but he was injured too severely and died four days later.

There still exists in the monastery of St Cyril, Moscow, a synodal letter, in which are specified a number of victims for whom Ivan solicited the prayers of the Church. The souls of 3,470 in all are to be prayed for; 986 of these are mentioned by name, the others are cited as—“with his wife,” “with sons,” “with wife and children,” “Kazarim Dubrovski and his two sons and the ten men who came to their defence,” “twenty men of the village of Kolomensko,” “eighty of Matveche,” “Remember, Lord, the souls of thy servants to the number of 1,505 Novgorodians.”

In the number of wives recognised by the Church as more or less legitimately joined with him he beat Henry VIII. by only one, but in the number of mistresses he can be compared with Solomon alone. Anastasia Romanof died in 1560; in the same year he married Mary Tangrak, either a Cheremiss or Tartar. His next wife was chosen out of all the most eligible maids in Russia. Her name was Marfa Sabakina of Novgorod. The marriage took place on October 28, 1571, and on November 13 of the same year she died. Her brother, Michael, the Tsar impaled shortly afterwards. Ivan’s marriage with Natalia Bulkatov was not recognised by the Church. Anna Koltoski he took next, but he forced her into a nunnery later, where she lived until 1626. Anna Vasilichekov and one Mstislavski succeeded, but only one was recognised,—which one is disputed. Vassilissa Melentief, a great beauty, was his next choice, but the Church recognised only Maria Nagoi, the mother of the murdered Dmitri, whom he married in 1580. When but a few months wed, he informed Queen Elizabeth that he would put aside his wife, who was shortly to become a mother, if he could find a suitable partner for himself in England. Poor Lady Mary Hastings, learning something of his character, begged her sovereign not to mate her with such a barbarian. His harem was that of a Turk.

He was prematurely worn out with his excesses. He could obtain little peace. Superstitious, he sent for wizards and prognosticators; Finns who certainly foretold the day, if not the hour, of his death. The appearance of a comet greatly terrified him—the once mighty Tsar lost his strength. Like Herod of old he died a fearful death, and he left his country in a worse plight than he found it.

He was received into the Church before his demise, but he is officially known as Yoanna and familiarly as “Groznoi” (the Terrible). His evil deeds are forgotten by the people, whilst the enrichment of his country by others of his day is counted to his credit. He was the first “Tsar” of Russia, and not in name only; he was its first ruler to become an absolute autocrat.

It is a fashion of this humanitarian age to make allowances for the harsh deeds of those who lived in ruder times, and in this nineteenth century even Ivan the Terrible has found apologists. His atrocities, his joy in the perpetration of the cruellest tortures on the innocent, all his wickednesses are admitted; but they call his lust by a Greek name and say he is to be pitied rather than condemned. Yet some there must be even now, who, when they read that Ivan always went to the torture rooms with joy and came away from its fiendish practices invigorated, refreshed and gay, will rightly regard him with loathing and horror. Not only is his character without a redeeming trait, but his nature is so fiendish and foul that the student may read long and investigate very closely before making sure that Ivan was human. His lusts had not the saving grace of humour; his fear even was sulphurous. Neither circumstances nor events either mitigate or condone his cruelties. Throughout his life he was actuated by one impulse only, to gratify and preserve himself. Those who believe that the occasion makes the man must feel that the fifty-years rule of this despot upsets that theory. Never was there such need for a Cromwell—the country could not produce a man, much less a liberator. Doubtless the action of previous rulers, the centuries of thraldom to Tartars, the thorough teaching of the Christian doctrine of obedience to rulers, contributed to the servility of the people. One of his tortured victims, it is true, did try to assault him, but the wretch was at once killed by the watchful Tsarevich, and in future Ivan ran no such risks. Prelates rebuked him and suffered; his victims suffered and forgave him—none tried to free themselves or help others. In all this dreary time only one man appears to have acted worthily. The Englishman, Jerom Horsey, exerted all the influence he possessed on behalf of Ivan’s prisoners. The services he rendered deserve a memorial; instead he received the condemnation of the Russia Company, in whose employ he was, and the encomiums and admiration of the Tsar whom he loathed and despised.

The magnitude and multitude of his crimes place Ivan far beyond other tyrants of his class. It is reassuring to know that in no other country and at no other time would his rule be permitted. The mere possibility of a recurrence of such a time of terror would determine every thinking being to die childless. The spirit of freedom renders the ascendency or continuance of his like impossible—but in mediÆval Moscow the spirit of freedom had no place.