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

Russian empire ; and it was he also who rebuilt, in stone, the walls of the Kremlin.

The portrait of Ivan III., by Karamsin, does not belie the declaration of that great prince: ' I will give to Russia whomsoever I please.' This was his answer to the boyards when they demanded the crown for his grandson, whom he had dispossessed in favour of the son of a second wife : for, to the present times, legitimacy in Russia has depended on the good pleasure of the Czars.

Peter the Great confirmed this principle of Ivan III., by making, as did that prince, the succession dependant on his caprice. He yet more resembled Ivan IV. by the execution of his son, whose life he destroyed, as well as that of the priests and others who encouraged the young prince in his resistance to the civilisation imported from the West, and enjoined as the most sacred duty by the cruel founder of the new empire of Russia. The following is extracted from M. le General Comte de Segur's History of Rtissia, and of Peter the Great:

' It was in 1716 that the Czar thus declared himself beyond and above all laws ; as though he was preparing for the terrible coup-(Vetat with which, in 1718, he stained his renown. *******

'In September, 1716, Alexis, to escape from the infant civilisation of the Russians, took refuge in the midst of the civilisation of Europe. He placed himself under the protection of Austria, and lived concealed with a mistress at Naples.

' Peter discovered his retreat, and wrote to him. His letter commenced with reproaches, and concluded by dreadful menaces if he did not obey the orders sent to him. It contained also these words: ' Do you fear me ? I assure you, and promise you, in the name of God, and by the final Judgment, that if you submit to my will, and return here, I will not subject you to any punishment; nay, I will love you even more than formerly.'

' On this solemn pledge of a father and a monarch, Alexis returned to Moscow the 3d February, 1718 : on the day after, he was disarmed, seized, interrogated, contemptuously excluded from the throne—both he and his posterity—and thrown into a fortress.

' There, every day and night, an absolute father, violating

348APPENDIX.

his sworn faith, together with all the laws of nature, and the laws that he had himself given to his empire, саше to tortur< the timid mind of this unfortunate prince, by a political inquisition erµial in insidious atrocity to the inquisition of religion. He tormented him with all the terrors of heaven and of earth, md forced him to denounce his friends and relations, including even his own mother.

' This protracted crime lasted for five months. The two first saw the exile of numerous nobles, the disinherison of a son, the imprisonment of a sister, the disgrace -and flagellation of a wife, and the execution of a brother-in-law. Nor was this sufficient. In one single day Gleboff, a Russian general, said to have been the lover of the repudiated Czarina, was impaled in the midst of a scaffold, the four corners of which were graced by the heads of a bishop, a boyard, and two other dignitaries, who, before decapitation, had been broken on the wheel. This horrible scaffold was again surrounded by a circle of stumps of trees, on which more than fifty priests and other citizens had been beheaded. * * * The emperor promenaded coolly in the midst of the scene. It is even said that, instigated by a restless ferocity, he mounted the scaffold to assure himself of the agony of Gleboff; and that the latter, making him a sign to approach, spit in his face. * * *

' Meanwhile the principal victim remained trembling and isolated. Peter caused him to be carried from the prisons of Moscow to those of Petersburg.

' It was there that he continued to torture the mind of his son by extorting from him the smallest recollections of irritation, indocility, and rebellion ; congratulating himself at each confession; noting them down day by day with fiendish precision, and labouring upon them, until he thought that, by means of certain constructions, he had succeeded in making out a case of capital crime.

' He then called together his creatures in order to submit to them, as he said, ' the long list of unheard-of crimes of which his son had been guilty against a father and a sovereign. He alone had the right to judge him, nevertheless he sought their aid ; for he feared eternal death, as he had promised his son pardon, and had sworn it to him by the judgment of God. If was therefore for them to do justice, without consideration of

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birth or person, in order that the country might not be wronged.' It is true that he added to this perspicuous and fearful order, the palpably insidious instruction, that the judges were to decide without flattering him or fearing his disgrace, if it was concluded that his son only merited a light punishment.

' The slaves understood their master. * * * The grandees of the state, to the number of one hundred and eighty, obeyed. They pronounced sentence of death unanimously and without hesitation. * * *

'' Nothing could deter the emperor from his design, — neither the time that his wrath had had to cool, nor remorse, nor yet the repentance, the submissiveness, and the trembling weakness of the suppliant. Things that appease and disarm even foreign enemies were without effect on the heart of a father. On the contrary, as he had been his son's accuser and judge, so also he resolved to be his executioner. On the 7th July. 1718, the very day following the sentence, he repaired, followed by his nobles, to receive the last tears of his son, and to mingle with them his own ; and when at length it was imagined that his heart had melted, he sent for a strong potion, which he had previously caused to be prepared. Growing impatient, he hastened its arrival by a second message ; he had it presented as a wholesome remedy, and did not retire—'profoundly sorrowful, it is true* — until he had poisoned the hapless young man, who still continued to implore his pardon. He then attributed the death of his victim, who expired some hours after in frightful convulsions, to the terror with which the announcement of his sentence had struck him. This gross pretence was the only cover he deemed necessary for the brutal minds of his dependants : but he eommended to them silence; which commendation was so well obeyed, that, except for the memoirs of a foreigner, a witness, and even an actor in the horrible drama, history would never have known these fearful and final details.'

* To weep over its victim is one of the traits of Russian character. —Note by the Author of the Travels.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

ivCONTENTS.

Rural Scenery in Moscow. — Drunkenness among the Rus

sians. — Hidden Poetry. — Song of the Don Cossacks. — The

Music of Northern Nations. — The Cossacks. — Their Cha

racter.— Influence under which they Fight. — Political Sub