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ladimir. into a drinking-cup. Vladimir, the son of Sviatoslaff, was for some time a monster of cruelty and debauchery. He killed his brother Yaropolk, and seized his dominions; and, Yaropolk having some time before murdered his brother Oleg, Vladimir now became sole ruler. To his hereditary dominions he added Galicia or Red Russia, and subjugated some Lithuanian and Livonian tribes. Suddenly he seems to have been troubled with religious difficulties. According to the chronicler, he sent ambassadors to bring him reports of the different religions-Catholic, Jewish, Mussulman, and Greek. The last of these beliefs seemed the most satisfactory. Vladimir marched south, took the city of Chersonesus in the Crimea, which at that time belonged to the Byzantine emperors, and then sent to demand the hand of the daughter of that potentate. After some deliberation his request was granted on condition that he was baptized. Accordingly he went to Constantinople in 988, and was admitted into the church, and at the same time received the hand of Anne, the Byzantine princess, although he seems to have already had a great number of wives. On his return to Kieff, he caused the image of Perun, the Slavonic god of thunder, which had been crected on an eminence, to be cast into the river, after having been belaboured by the cudgels of his soldiers. After this Vladimir issued a proclamation ordering all the inhabitants to proceed on the following day to the banks of the river to receive baptism. This extraordinary command met with universal obedience, and Russia was Christianized. As Vladimir introduced Christianity into Jaroslaff. Russia, so Yaroslaff his son was the first legislator. He was prince of Novgorod, and died in 1054. Vladimir on his death divided his dominions among his sons:-to Yaroslaff, Novgorod; to. Iziaslaff, Polotsk; to Boris, Rostoff; to Gleb, Murom; to Sviatoslaff, the Drevlians; and a few other provinces to others of his sons. Kieff, his capital, was seized by his nephew Sviatopolk, who murdered Boris and Gleb, now canonized among the martyrs of the Russian Church. Yaroslaff at length drove Sviatopolk from Kieff, and was temporarily restored by the Poles, but only to be driven out again, and he ended his life as an exile. Yaroslaff was successful against the Petchenegs, but failed in an attack on Constantinople. His great claim to be remembered lies in his publishing the first recension of the Russkaia Pravda, the earliest Russian code, which was handed down in the chronicles of Novgorod.

Period of the

We now leave the earliest period of Russian history, with its romantic stories and embedded sagas, telling us panages. of heroic men, for the second division of our subject. The death of Yaroslaff was followed by the dreariest portion of the Russian annals-the period of the apanages (udielî), lasting from 1054 to 1238. The country was now broken up into petty principalities, and we shall understand its condition more clearly if we remember that the chief divisions of Russia from the 11th century to the 13th were as follows1:

(1) The principality of Smolensk, formerly of great importance, as including in its territories the sources of three of the great Russian rivers-the Volga, the Dnieper, and the Dina.

(2) The principality of Russia, in the early and restricted sense, the original element of the country. The first form of the name is Rous. The word appears to have been a collective appellation of the people; it was under the influence of the Byzantine writers that in the 17th century the form Rossia sprang up, which in time spread over the whole land. We must not forget, however, that to the majority of Englishmen, till the beginning of the 18th century, its name was Muscovy. Its situation on the Dnieper was very advantageous; and the soil was fertile, the black-carth region being at the present time the great wheat-growing district of Russia. Besides, the Byzantine territory was not far off. On the principality of Kieff depended that of Perciaslavl; and Vishgorod, Bielgorod, and Tortcliesk were made apanages for princes of the same dynasty.

1.See Rambaud, Histoire de la Russie, p. 76.

(3) On the affluents of the right bank of the Dnieper, especially the Sozha, the Desna, and the Seim, stretched the principalities of Tchernigoff with Starodub and Lubech, and Novgorod Severski with Putivl, Kursk, and Briansk.

(4) The double principality of Ryazan and Murom. (5) The principality of Suzdal.

(6) The republics of Novgorod and Pskoff, and the daughter-city of the latter, Vyatka.

Iziaslaff, the son of Yaroslaff, seems to have had a troubled reign of twenty-four years, constantly disturbed by civil wars. On his death in 1078, although he had two sons, he left the principality of Kieff to his brother Vsevolod, apparently on a principle common among the Slavs to bequeath the crown to the oldest male of the family; but, on the death of Vsevolod, Sviatopolk, the son of Iziaslaff, succeeded in 1093. At his death Vladimir Monomakh came to the throne, and ruled from 1113 to 1125. He was the son of Vsevolod, and was called after his maternal grandfather, the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomachus. The reign of this prince was a very prosperous one. He left a curious treatise called "Instruction" (Pouchenie), addressed to his sons, in which we get a picture of the simple life in Russia at that period (see below, p. 103). He also founded on the river Kliazma a town which bears his name. There were continual quarrels among his descendants, but it is impossible to go into these minutely here. George Dolgoruki, one of the sons of Vladimir Monomakh, gained possession of Kieff in 1157, but the city soon began to pale before the growing power of Suzdal, and ceased to be the capital. He died the same year, just while a league was being formed to drive him out of it. The confederates entered the city, and their chief made himself prince. In 1169 Andrew Bogolioubski, son of George Dolgoruki, formed a coalition against Mstislaff, who was reigning in Kieff, and a large army was sent against the city. It was taken and pillaged; and the sacred pictures, sacerdotal ornaments, and even bells were carried off. It is on this occasion that the head of St Clement, the Slavonic apostle, which is known to have been preserved at Kieff, was lost.

In

After the fall of this city Russia ceased for some time to have any political centre. During the fifty-four years previous to the arrival of the Mongols, our chief interest is drawn to Suzdal and Galicia, and the republics of Novgorod and Pskoff. George Dolgoruki had founded the principality of Suzdal; his great anxiety, however, was to make himself master of Kieff. The chief aim of his son Andrew Bogoliubski was to extend his authority in another direction, and to cause it to be recognized at Novgorod the Great, where he had established his nephew as a kind of lieutenant. He attacked the city in 1170, but was completely repulsed from its walls, a panic having seized his army. The Novgorodians put to death many of their prisoners, and sold others as slaves, so that, to quote the words of their chronicler, "six Suzdalians could be bought for a grivna," an old piece of money. 1173 Andrew was also defeated by Mstislaff the Brave at Smolensk, and in 1174 he was assassinated by his own nobles. The reign of Andrew was in all respects an important one. From his refusing to divide his dominions among his brothers and nephews, it is plain that he saw the evil effect of the system of apanages and could conceive the idea of a united state. He was a man of iron will, and an astute diplomatist rather than a great soldier. He thus had something of the spirit of the Ivans, and anticipated their policy. He may be said with truth to have been the last of the conspicuous rulers of Russia before the Mongol invasions. As yet we have had but few worthy of the attention of the historian. They are Rurik, the founder of the empire, Oleg the warrior, and Olga the first Christian sovereign. To these succeed the warlike

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Sviatoslaff, slain by the Petchenegs; Vladimir, who caused the country to be Christianized; and Yaroslaff his son, the legislator. During the second period, in which we find Russia weakened and divided into apanages, we have only two noteworthy princes among a score of unimportant persons,-Vladimir Monomakh and Andrew. The death of Andrew, whose murderers, were not brought to justice, was followed by many petty wars. The only event, however, of any importance for a considerable time is the battle of Lipetsk (near Pereiaslavl Zaliesski) in 1215, in which George, son of Vsevolod, brother of Andrew, was defeated by the combined troops of Novgorod, Pskoff, and Smolensk. In 1220 we hear of Nijni-Novgorod being founded. A prince of considerable importance was Roman of Volhynia, to whom the inhabitants of Galicia offered the government of their principality, but he was superseded by another Vladimir, and did not get the crown till after a great deal of hard fighting. He is said by Kadlubek, the Polish historian, to have acted with ferocious cruelty. In 1205 he was killed in a battle with the Poles. In 1224 we have the first invasion of Russia by the Mongols. Daniel of Galicia was one of the last of the Russian princes to make his submission to Batu (1238). He died in 1264. In the 14th century the principality of Galicia was lost in the Polish republic, having been annexed to Lithuania. It joined the fortunes of that state in its union with Poland at the time of the marriage of Jagiełło with Jadwiga.

We now come to the third division of our subjec Mongol Russia under the yoke of the Mongols, viz., from 1238 to supre- 1462. This is indeed a dreary period, in which the political and material development of the country was delayed by its complete enslavement. The first occasion on which the Russians came into contact with their Mongolian invaders was in 1224, when, in company with their allies, the Polovtzes, they suffered a complete defeat on the banks of the Kalka, near where it flows into the sea of Azoff, and djoining the site of the present town of Mariupol. this occasion, however, the Mongols only marched a little way up the river Dnieper, and retired after devastating the country. In 1238 they reappeared, and after destroying Bolgarî, the capital of the Finnish Bulgarians on the Volga, advanced against Ryazan, which was plundered and burned, with adjoining cities. They then defeated the army of Suzdal, at Kolomna, on the Oka; after which they burned Moscow, Suzdal, Yaroslavl, and other important towns. The grandduke Yuri of Suzdal had encamped on the river Sit, almost on the frontiers of the territory of Novgorod. He was there defeated and was decapitated on the field of battle, while his nephew Vasilko had his throat cut for refusing to serve Batu. After taking Tver and advancing within fifty leagues of Novgorod, the Mongols turned south and occupied the two following years (1239–1240) in ravaging southern Russia. They then burned Pereiaslavl and Tchernigoff, and Mangu, the grandson of Jenghiz Khan, directed his march against Kieff. The noise of the great host proceeding to the capture of the fated city is graphically described by the chronicler. The city was taken and given up to pillage, not even the graves being respected. Volhynia and Galicia followed the fate of the other principalities, and all Russia was now under the yoke of the Mongols, except the territory of Novgorod.

The subsequent movements of these barbarians in Hungary and Moravia cannot be described here. It will suffice to say that soon afterwards Batu turned eastwards. He next founded on the Volga the city of Sarai (the Palace), which became the capital of the powerful Mongolian empire, the Golden Horde. Here also congregated the remains of the Petchenegs, the Polovtzes, and other

tribes, and to these barbarians Russia was for a long time tributary. In 1272 the Mongolian hordes embraced Islam. Yaroslaff, who entered into his territory of Suzdal after the death of his brother Yuri, found his hereditary domains completely devastated. He had commenced rebuilding the ruined town, when he was summoned by Batu to do him homage in his new capital of Sarai. This, however, was not considered sufficient, and the poor prince was obliged to betake himself to the court of the great khan, which was at the further end of Asia, on the banks of the river Amur. His title was confirmed, but on his return he died of the fatigues of the journey. He was succeeded in Suzdal by his son Andrew (1246-1252). His other son Alexander reigned at Novgorod the Great, and gained the surname of Nevski from his celebrated victory over the Swedes in 1240. He and Dmitri Donskoi are the only great figures of this period of national abasement. Alexander Nevski has become consecrated in the memories of the people, and is now one of the leading Russian saints. In spite, however, of his services to the people of Novgorod, he afterwards quarrelled with them and retired to Pereiaslavl Zaliesski. But the citizens were soon glad to betake themselves to his help. On being invaded by the German Sword-bearing Knights, who had established themselves in Livonia in the year 1201, and an army of Finns, Alexander was summoned, like another Camillus, and defeated the enemy on Lake Peipus in what was called the "Battle of the Ice" in 1242. He entered Novgorod in triumph with his prisoners. In spite of all this brilliant success, Alexander was unable to resist the power of the Golden Horde, and was obliged to go to Sarai to do homage to the khan. He was accompanied by his brother Andrew. The ceremony was always attended by many degrading acts of submission on the part of the tributary prince. In 1260 the Novgorodians, who had so long preserved the liberty of. their republic uninjured, consented to submit to the khan and pay tribute; Alexander died before reaching Vladimir on his return from one of these humiliating journeys. A great part of western Russia was now consolidated by the Lithuanian princes into a state, the capital of which was Vilna and the language White Russian. To this many of the western provinces of Russia gravitated, and by the marriage of the Polish heiress Jadwiga with Jagiełło of Lithuania these provinces went to Poland and were not reannexed to Russia till a much later period. The eastern portion of Russia grouped itself round Moscow, which is first heard of in the chronicles in 1147. We find four considerable eastern states-Ryazan, Suzdal, Tver, and Moscow. For a century after its foundation we hear nothing of this city, the name of which is certainly Finnish. We are told that it was burned by the Mongols in 1237, and that a brother of Alexander Nevski was killed there in 1248, in a battle against the Lithuanians. We have seen that the political centre of the country has constantly changed. From Novgorod it went to Kieff, from Kioff to Vladimir, the capital of Suzdal, and from Vladimir to Moscow; we shall soon find that owing to the vigorous policy of its rulers this principality became the nucleus of the great Russian empire, and gathered round it the adjacent states. Its true founder was Daniel, a son of Alexander Nevski, who added to it the cities of Pereiaslavl Zaliesski and Kolomna. At his death in 1303 he was the first to be buried in the church of St Michael the Archangel, where all the Russian sovercigns were laid till the days of Peter the Great. Since that time, with the exception of Peter II., they have been interred in the church of the Petropavlovski fortress at St Petersburg. Daniel was followed on the throne by his sons Yuri and Ivan in succession. Yuri Danilovich (1303-1326) took possession of Mozhaisk. The

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reign of Ivan Kalita, or the Purse (1328-1340), still further strengthened the new principality. Tver was added, and the pre-eminence of Moscow was assured by the metropolitan coming to reside there. After Kalita came in succession his two sons, Simeon the Proud (13401353) and Ivan II. (1353-1359). Simeon first took the title of grand-duke of all the Russias. He died of the Black Death, which was then devastating Europe. In spite of the efforts of these princes to maintain the supremacy of Moscow, on their death the hegemony of the Russian states went again for a time to Suzdal. It was Dmitri, surnamed Donskoi, the son of Ivan II., who won the battle of Kulikovo (lit. "the field of woodcocks") over Mamai, the Mongolian chief, in 1380. In spite of this, however, Toktamish their general invaded Russia, burned Moscow to the ground, and put to death a great number of the inhabitants. To Dmitri succeeded his son Vasilii or Basil (1389-1425), who was prince both of Moscow and Vladimir. He in turn was followed by Vasilii the Blind (1425-1462).

We begin to touch firmer ground when we approach the reign of Ivan III., the son of Vasilii, who may be considered the founder of the autocracy. We may take, therefore, as our fourth division the period from 1462 to 1613, which will include the consolidation of the empire under the vigorous rule of Ivan III., Basil V., and Ivan IV., the usurpation of Boris Godunoff, the reign of the false Demetrius, and the troubles following upon it till the accession of the house of Romanoff in the person of Michael lan III. in the year 1613. Ivan III. reigned forty-three years, and had as much influence in the consolidation of Russia as Louis XI. had in that of France. It was the great age when throughout Europe absolute monarchies were being created on the ruins of feudalism. On his accession Ivan found himself surrounded by powerful neighbours-to the east the great principality of Lithuania, to the south the Mongols; Ryazan and Tver had not been annexed to the territory of Muscovy; Novgorod and Pskoff were still republics. It was against Novgorod, a wealthy city and member of the Hanseatic league, that his efforts were first directed. In consequence of its situation, and by its paying the tribute demanded, it had escaped from the ravages which other parts of Russia had undergone. Taking advantage of the factions which harassed this city, he succeeded in creating a party subservient to his own interests, and as early as 1470 had got the control of the government of the city, which a rival faction was anxious to transfer to the Poles. In 1478 the republic of Novgorod ceased to exist; the chief opponents of Ivan were transported to Moscow, and their goods confiscated. The veche, as the public assembly was called, was terminated for ever, and the bell which had summoned the mutinous citizens carried off triumphantly to Moscow. In 1495 the tyrant was so foolish as to confiscate the goods of many of the German merchants who traded at Novgorod. In consequence of this nearly all the foreigners left the city, and its prosperity rapidly declined. It is now a decayed provincial town, interesting only to the antiquary. In 1489 Vyatka, a daughter city of Pskoff, was annexed and lost thereby its republican constitution. In 1464 by giving the hand of his sister to the prince of Ryazan Ivan made sure of the proximate annexation of that apanage. He seized Tver and joined it to his dominions, when the grand-prince Michael hád allied himself with Lithuania. The system of apanages in Russia had now to come to an end. But Ivan, who had married the niece of the Byzantine emperor, and assumed as his cognizance the two-headed eagle, was also to come into collision with the hereditary enemies of Russia, the Mongols. The great power of the Golden Horde had been broken up;

on its ruins had arisen the empires of Kazan and of Sarai or Astrakhan, the horde of the Nogais, and the khanate of the Crimea. In 1478, when Ahmed, the khan of the Great Horde, whose capital was Sarai, sent his ambassadors with his portrait, to which the Russian was to do homage, Ivan trampled it under foot, and put to death all the envoys, except one, who was deputed to take back the news to the khan. The reply of Ahmed to this outrage was a declaration of war; and the two armies met on the banks of the Oka. Ivan, who, like Louis XI., was much more of a diplomatist than a soldier, according to the accounts of the chroniclers, was in great terror, and could not be induced to fight by the persuasions of his soldiers or the benedictions of his ecclesiastics. He had already, after the armies had been for some time encamped opposite to each other, given the signal of retreat, when, in consequence of a sudden panic the Mongols also retreated, and the armies fled from. each other in mutual fear. This invasion, which occurred in the year 1480, was the last great inroad of the Asiatic enemies of Russia, but we shall find some even later than the days of Ivan the Terrible, in whose time Moscow was burned by these barbarians. Meanwhile Ivan went. on in his career of annexation. In 1472 he conquered Permia, in 1489 Vyatka. Ten years afterwards he had extended his authority as far north as the Petchora. His good fortune seemed ever on the increase; by a war with Alexander, king of Poland, he gained an accession of territory to the west as far as the river Desna. Upon peace being_concluded, Alexander married Helen, the daughter of Ivan, but that monarch, on pretence that no regard had been paid to his daughter's religious scruples, declared war against his new son-in-law. The Polish monarch could not rely upon the fidelity of many of his vassals, as we find so often the case in Polish history, and suffered a complete defeat at the battle of the Vedrosha. On the other hand, in 1501 the Russians were routed at the battle of the Siritza, near Isborsk, by the grand-master of the Teutonic order, Hermann von Plettenberg. The order had been established in Lithuania as early as 1225; the Sword-bearers amalgamated with them in 1237.

In 1472 Ivan had married a Byzantine princess, Sophia, daughter of Thomas, brother of the emperor Constantine Palæologus. This Thomas had fled to Rome after the fall. of Constantinople in 1453. In consequence of this marriage, a great many Greeks came to Moscow, bringing Byzantine culture, such as it was, to Russia, and among other things a quantity of valuable manuscripts, which formed the nucleus of the synodal library. Italians also made their appearance in Russia, among others the celebrated Aristotle Fioraventi of Bologna, the architect of so many buildings at Moscow. Ivan not only welcomed. foreigners in his dominions, but entered into relations with many European powers, among others the Germans, the Venetians, and the Pope. His reign is remarkable, not only for the consolidation of the Russian autocracy, but also for legislation. In 1497 he issued his Sudebnik, or Book of Laws, the second Russian code after the Russkaia Pravda of Yaroslaff. Comparison of the two codes will show how much had been done by the Mongols to lower the Russian character. It is in the reign of Ivan that we first hear of the use of the knout: an archimandrite and some noblemen were publicly knouted for being concerned in forging a will. At his death Ivan bequeathed his Basil throne to his second son Vasilii or Basil, passing over his grandson, the child of his eldest son Ivan, who had predeceased him; he was evidently unwilling to commit his growing empire to the perils of a minority. Vasilii Ivanovich (1505-1533) fully carried out the programme of his father. He destroyed the independence of Pskoff in 1510, put an end to the veche or popular assembly, and carried.

off the bell which summoned the citizens. Thus fell the
last of the Slavonic republics. Ryazan was next added
to the Muscovite territory. The prince, being accused of
having contracted an alliance with the khan of the Crimea,
fled to Lithuania, where he died in obscurity. Nov-
gorod Severski was annexed soon after, and by a war with
Sigismund I. Basil got back Smolensk. He was doomed,
however, to suffer from an invasion of the Mongols of the
Crimea, and is said to have signed a humiliating treaty to
save his capital, whereby he acknowledged himself the
tributary of the khan.

Meanwhile at home Basil exercised absolute authority;
Russia now exhibited the spectacle of an Asiatic despotism.
He entered into negotiations with many foreign princes.
Herberstein, the German ambassador, who has left us such
an interesting account of the Russia of this time, has told
us of the great splendour of his court. We now come to
Ivan IV. the reign of the terrible Ivan, who has left his name
(the
written in blood upon the annals of Russia, and ruled for
Terrible). the long period of fifty-one years (1533-1584). It was a
fortunate thing for the aggrandizement of the empire
that, instead of having a succession of weak sovereigns,
who only ruled a short time, it had three such vigorous
potentates as Ivan III., Basil, and Ivan IV., whose united
reigns extended over a hundred and twenty-two years.
The grand-duke Basil at his death left two sons, Ivan and
Yuri, under the guardianship of his second, wife Helen
Glinska. She had come into Russia from Lithuania, her
family having been proscribed by the Polish king Alexander.
on the accusation of having plotted against his life. The
grand-duchess ruled with great ability, but died in 1538,
having been, as is supposed, poisoned. The two young
princes then became the victims of the intrigues of the
chief families, especially those of Shuiski and Belski.
Ivan early gave proof of a vigorous understanding, whereas
his younger brother Yuri appears to have been half-witted.
In 1543, when only in his thirteenth year, Ivan determined
to emancipate himself from the galling yoke of the boiars,
and by a kind of coup d'état threw off their tutelage, and
caused Shuiski to be torn to pieces by dogs. After this,
for some time, he was under the influence of his maternal |
relations. In January 1547 Ivan was crowned by the
metropolitan Macarius, and took the title of czar, or tsar,
a Slavonic form of the Latin Cæsar. He soon afterwards
celebrated his marriage with Anastasia Romanova. The
same year a great conflagration took place at Moscow.
'The mob affected to believe that this had been caused by
the Glinskis, who were very unpopular, and massacred a
member of that family.

After this time Ivan seems to have committed himself very much to the guidance of the priest Silvester and Alexis Adasheff. This was the happiest portion of his reign, for he was also greatly under the influence of his amiable wife. To this period also belongs a recension of the Sudebnik of his grandfather Ivan III. (1550), and the Stoglaff, or Book of the Hundred Chapters, by which the affairs of the church were regulated (1551). In the following year Ivan became master of Kazan, and two years later of Astrakhan. The power of the Mongols was now almost broken. Triumphant in the south and the east, he then turned his attention to the north, being anxious to open up a means of communication with the west. He anticipated the plans which Peter the Great was destined to carry out long afterwards. He was thus brought into collision with the Swedes and the Teutonic Knights. When Ivan, sent a German named Schlitt to procure the assistance of some foreign artisans, they were stopped by the Germans and prevented from entering Russian territory. In consequence of this, war afterwards broke out between Ivan and the Order. In 1558 the

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Russian army invaded Livonia, and took several towns,
whereupon the Order made an alliance with Sigismund
Augustus of Poland. But, while Russia was busy with
this war, a great change was taking place in the home
policy of Ivan. He threw off the influence of Silvester
and Adasheff, who were both banished. From this time
may be said to date the commencement of the atrocities of
this czar which have earned him the epithet constantly
added to his name. He was especially moved by the
treason of Prince Andrew Kurbski, who, having lost a
battle with the Poles, was too much afraid of the wrath of
his imperial master to venture again into his clutches.
He accordingly fled to the king of Poland, by whom he
was well received, and from his safe retreat he commenced
an angry correspondence with the czar, reproaching him.
with his cruelties (see below, p. 104). The answer of
Ivan has been preserved. In it he dwells upon the degrad-
ing subjection in which he had been kept by his early
advisers, and attempts to justify his cruelties by saying
that they were only his slaves whom he had killed, over
whom God had given him power of life and death.
In December 1564 Ivan retired with a few personal
friends to his retreat at Alexandrovskoe, near Moscow,
where he passed his time pretty much as Louis XI. did at
Plessy-les-Tours, for he resembled the French monarch
both in his cruelty and his superstition. The boiars,
afraid that the monarch was about to quit them for ever,
went in crowds to Alexandrovskoe to supplicate him to
return to Moscow. This he finally consented to do, and
on his return established his bodyguard of oprichniks,
who were the chief agents of his cruelty. In the year in
which he retired to Alexandrovskoe we have the establish-
ment of a printing-press at Moscow. Ivan now commenced
a long series of cruelties. To this period belong the deposi
tion and perhaps murder of Philip, the archbishop of Mos-"
cow; the execution of Alexandra, the widow of his brother
Yuri; the atrocities committed at Novgorod, which seems
to have fallen under the tyrant's vengeance for having
meditated opening its gates to the king of Poland; and,
lastly, the terrible butcheries on the Red Square (Krasnaia
Plostchad).

It was in the reign of Ivan that the English first had dealings with Russia. In 1553, while Edward VI. was on the throne, three ships were sent out under Willoughby and Chancellor to look for a north-east passage to China and India. Willoughby and the crews of two of the ships were frozen to death, but Chancellor arrived safely in the White Sea, and thence proceeded to the court of Ivan, by whom he was favourably received. The English secured great trading privileges from Ivan, and established factories in the country. In one of his mad sallies, Ivan' actually wrote to Queen Elizabeth (1570) asking for a safe retreat in her dominions if he should be driven out by his own subjects.

Ivan was continually waging war in the Baltic territory with the Teutonic Knights, in which, although on the whole unsuccessful, he committed great cruelties. But in 1571 he was obliged to suffer another invasion of the Mongols of the Crimea, who, to quote the quaint language of an English resident, burned "the Mosco every stick (Hakluyt's Voyages, i. 402). On the death of Sigismund Augustus of Poland in 1572, when the crown of that country had become elective, the family of the Jagicttos being now extinct, Ivan declared himself one of the com petitors. The successful candidate was the French prince Henry of Valois, but he soon fled from his new kingdom,' and, on the throne again becoming vacant, the redoubtable Stephen Batory was chosen, who proved a formidable foe to the tyrant now growing old. I consequence of the successes of Stephen, Ivan was obliged to abandon all his

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