Ivan The First Of The Czars
The victory of the Don did not free Russia from the Tartar yoke. Two
years afterwards the principality of Moscow was overrun and ravaged by a
lieutenant of the mighty Tamerlane, the all-conquering successor of
Genghis Khan. Several times Moscow was taken and burned. Full seventy
years later, at the court of the Golden Horde, two Russian princes might
have been seen disputing before the great khan the possession of the
the battle of the Don had sounded the knell of the Tartar power. Anarchy
continued to prevail in the Golden Horde. The power of the grand princes
of Moscow steadily grew. The khans themselves played into the hands of
their foes. Russia was slowly but surely casting off her fetters, and
deliverance was at hand.
Ivan III., great-grandson of Dmitri Donskoi, ascended the throne in
1462, nearly two centuries and a half after the Tartar invasion. During
all that period Russia had been the vassal of the khans. Only now was
its freedom to come. It was by craft, more than by war, that Ivan won.
In the field he was a dastard, but in subtlety and perfidy he surpassed
all other men of his time, and his insidious but persistent policy
ended by making him the autocrat of all the Russias.
He found powerful enemies outside his dominions,--the Tartars, the
Lithuanians, and the Poles. He succeeded in defeating them all. He had
powerful rivals within the domain of Russia. These also he overcame. He
made Moscow all-powerful, imitated the tyranny of the Tartars, and
founded the autocratic rule of the czars which has ever since prevailed.
The story of the fall of the Golden Horde may be briefly told. It was
the work of the Russian army, but not of the Russian prince. In 1469,
after collecting a large army, Ivan halted and began negotiating. But
the army was not to be restrained. Disregarding the orders of their
general, they chose another leader, and assailed and captured Kasan, the
chief Tartar city. As for the army of the Golden Horde, it was twice
defeated by the Russian force. In 1480 a third invasion of the Tartars
took place, which resulted in the annihilation of their force.
The tale, as handed down to us, is a curious one. The army, full of
martial ardor, had advanced as far as the Oka to meet the Tartars; but
on the approach of the enemy Ivan, stricken with terror, deserted his
troops and took refuge in far-off Moscow. He even recalled his son, but
the brave boy refused to obey, saying that "he would rather die at his
post than follow the example of his father."
The murmurs of the people, the supplication of the priests, the
indignation of the boyars, forced him to return to the army, but he
returned only to cover it with shame and himself with disgrace. For
when the chill of the coming winter suddenly froze the river between the
two forces, offering the foe a firm pathway to battle, Ivan, in
consternation, ordered a retreat, which his haste converted into a
disorderly flight. Yet the army was two hundred thousand strong and had
not struck a blow.
Fortune and his allies saved the dastard monarch. For at this perilous
interval the khan of the Crimea, an ally of Russia, attacked the capital
of the Golden Horde and forced a hasty recall of its army; and during
its disorderly homeward march a host of Cossacks fell upon it with such
fury that it was totally destroyed. Russia, threatened with a new
subjection to the Tartars by the cowardice of its monarch, was finally
freed from these dreaded foes through the aid of her allies.
But the fruits of this harvest, sown by others, were reaped by the czar.
His people, who had been disgusted with his cowardice, now gave him
credit for the deepest craft and wisdom. All this had been prepared by
him, they said. His flight was a ruse, his pusillanimity was prudence;
he had made the Tartars their own destroyers, without risking the fate
of Russia in a battle; and what had just been condemned as dastard
baseness was now praised as undiluted wisdom.
Ivan would never have gained the title of Great from his deeds in war.
He won it, and with some justice, from his deeds in peace. He was great
in diplomacy, great in duplicity, great in that persistent pursuit of a
single object through which men rise to power and fame. This object, in
his case, was autocracy. It was his purpose to crush out the last shreds
of freedom from Russia, establish an empire on the pernicious pattern of
a Tartar khanate, which had so long been held up as an example before
Russian eyes, and make the Prince of Moscow as absolute as the Emperor
of China. He succeeded. During his reign freedom fled from Russia. It
has never since returned.
The story of how this great aim was accomplished is too long to be told
here, and the most important part of it must be left for our next tale.
It will suffice, at this point, to say that by astute policy and good
fortune Ivan added to his dominions nineteen thousand square miles of
territory and four millions of subjects, made himself supreme autocrat
and his voice the sole arbiter of fate, reduced the boyars and
subordinate princes to dependence on his throne, established a new and
improved system of administration in all the details of government, and
by his marriage with Sophia, the last princess of the Greek imperial
family,--driven by the Turks from Constantinople to Rome,--gained for
his standard the two-headed eagle, the symbol of autocracy, and for
himself the supreme title of czar.
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