Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

HIS MARRIAGES.317

owed much of his glory; he could not endure the weight of gratitude which was due to them, and, for fear of continuing ungrateful, he slew them. After this, a savage fury took possession of his mind; the ever-present memory of the dissensions and violence of the nobles who disputed among themselves the custody of his cradle, revealed to him everywhere traitors and conspirators.

Idolatry of self, applied in all its forms to the government of the state, was the only code of justice adopted by the Czar, and ratified by the assent of Russia. Notwithstanding his crimes, Ivan was the elect of the nation. Elsewhere he would have been regarded as a monster vomited forth by hell.

Tired of lying, he pushed the brutality of tyranny to the point of dispensing with dissimulation ¦¦— that precaution of common tyrants. He exhibited himself as shnply ferocious; and, that he might have no longer occasion to blush at the virtues of others, he abandoned the last of his former austere friends to the vengeance of more indulgent favourites.

There was then established between the Czar and his satellites an emulation in crime that makes one shudder: and (here God again reveals himself in this almost supernatural history) in the same manner that his moral life is divided into two periods, so also his person presents two different aspects; his countenance underwent a change; he was handsome in his early youth; he grew hideous when he became criminal.

He lost an accomplished wife, and took another as

sanguinaiy as himself; she also dying, he manned

ao·ain, to the great scandal of the Greek church,

which does not allow of tlnee nuptials. He married

p 3

318

HIS CRUELTIES.

in this manner, five, six, or seven times! The exact number of these unions is unknown. He repudiated, killed, or neglected all his wives; not one long resisted either his caresses or his fury : but, notwithstanding his avowed indifference to the objects of his past passion, he set about avenging their loss with a scrupulous rage, which, on each death of an empress, spread terror throughout the realm. Nevertheless, most frequently, the death whicli formed the pretext for so many executions had been caused or commanded by the Czar himself. His mournings were merely opportunities for shedding the blood and the tears of others. It was always said that the pious Czarina, the beautiful Czarina, the unfortunate Czarina, had been poisoned by the ministers or counsellors of the Czar, or by the boyards, of whom he wished to rid himself. It seems to have been in vain that he himself strove to throw off his mask : he continued to lie by habit, if not by necessity; such is the inseparable union of falsehood and tyranny.

The calumnies of Ivan IV. were always intimations of death. Whoever was touched by the venom of his words, fell: corpses were heaped up around him, yet death was the least of the evils with which he loaded the condemned. His profoundly skilful cruelty found out the art of making his victims I0n2; for the last stroke. Expert in giving torture, he amused himself with their agony; he protracted it with diabolical address, and in his cruel solicitude, he gently nursed their torments, and dreaded their death as much as they longed for it. Death was, in fact, the only good that he accorded his subjects.

It will be necessary, however, to enumerate, once

FATE OF NOVGOROD.

319

for all, a few of the refinements of cruelty invented by himself, and exercised upon the pretended criminals whom he would punish. He caused parts of their body to be boiled while the other parts were being bathed in ice- water. He had them flayed alive in his presence, and their quivering naked flesh lacerated with knives, all the while feasting his eyes with their blood and convulsions, and his ears with their screams. Sometimes he finished their torments by stabbing them with his own hand, but more often, reproaching himself with this act of clemency as a weakness, he contrived to leave uninjured the vitals as long as possible ; he operated on the members, but carefully, and without attacking the trunk, casting the living morsels one by one to starved wild beasts, who devoured them in the presence of the mutilated victims. The palpitating trunks were sustained with the utmost care and science, in order to prolong to the utmost these scenes, in which the Czar and the tigers vied with each other in ferocity.

The Great Novgorod may be selected as an example of the wholesale wrath of the monster. The entire city was accused of treason in favour of the Poles ; its real crime was, having long been independent and glorious. The air was tainted by the multitude of executions that took place within its blood-stained walls ; the waters of the Volkoff were corrupted by the bodies which lay unburied round the ramparts of the condemned city ; and, as if deaths by execution were not prompt enough for the will of the tyrant, a pestilential epidemic was created in order to aid the scaffold in destroying the population more speedily, and in glutting .the rage of the father— a title of affec-P 4

320

CRUELTIES OF IVAN.

tion which the Russians give to all their sovereigns

оо

indiscriminately.

Under this Czar, death became the slave of a man; it lost its terrors in proportion as life lost its pleasures. The pleasure of the prince was the despair of the people; his power was extermination, his life an inglorious Avar against beings deprived of defence, or even of will, and whom God had placed under his protection ; his law was a hatred of the human race, and his moving passion, fear.

When he revenged himself, he carried his justice to the last degree of ^relationship, exterminating entire families—young girls, old men, women with child, and unweaned infants. Nor did he confine himself to destroying merely a few families; he annihilated whole provinces, sparing nothing that had life, not even the animals; he poisoned the very fishes in the lakes and rivers; and — can it be believed? — he commanded the sons to become the executioners of the fathers!—and was obeyed !! Men, then, are capable of carrying the love of life to the point of killing those who gave it, rather than lose it themselves !

Using human bodies as clocks, Ivan invented poisons which operated at fixed intervals, so that he had the satisfaction of counting his hours and dividing his time by the deaths of his subjects — the most scrupulous precision presiding over this infernal amusement. He assisted himself at all the executions he commanded: the steam of blood intoxicated without satiating him ; he was never so happy as after having presided at the toi*ments of numerous victims. The monster, after having given so many