Celebrated crimes of the Russian court

Front matter

CELEBRATED CRIMES

ALEXANDRE DUMAS aV .0

A it

CHAPTER I. IVAN, "the terrible " (1533 -1584)

The most celebrated of the Ivans, emperors of the Russias, has been called '' the Louis XL of the North " ; but he was, in the body, much more like King Henry VHL of England, and resembled him morally in having had seven or eight wives when the Greek Church, which was his, allows but four marital unions to the orthodox. He is one of the most curious and gloomy tyrants to study; yet, without claims, he has attained historical height and popular respect is attached to his memory.

As he drew his first breath, Russian freedom was exhaling its last: to the slave, captured in war, and the serf, the slave born to the land, was added the peasant, by being clamped to the earth which he tilled and with which he went at a sale.

Celebrated Crimes ot tbe IRusatan Court

He was son, this fourth Ivan, of a Basil son<-of- Basil (Vasili-VasihewitcH), a grand prince or grand duke, first designated as Czar (Tsar). His Russia, though of the sixteenth century, was still as Slavonic as in the eleventh. The dimensions of his '' Grand Russia " were as " Little Russia " to what they became when his rule terminated after fifty years.

His fate to earn such a name as " The Terrible " was inherited; his mother, Helena, was, without exaggeration, hailed as being a combination of Agrippina, Poppeia, and Messalina. She was the second regent in Russia, her predecessor being Olga of note.

Although Ivan's father had Basil for his patron saint, he chose to devote the boy to St. Sergius. On his birthday, the proud father placed the infant in that saint's shrine, in Trinity Cathedral of Moscow. This shrine is in brass and was covered by a solid silver baldaquin, weighing ten quintals — the gift of the Empress Anna. She, alone, seems to have thought in her time that the dedication was of some good to the country.

The Scriptures are profuse in picturing the evils when a boy prince reigns — through others, but they do not prophesy those happening through others. In this case, the regent-mother was poisoned, her favourite imprisoned, and the Prince Chouiski, who had subverted the ruling powers, took command over the heir, then seven years old. As the usual first step of a usurper, the treasury was pillaged, the state lands

Hvan, **Ube UerdblC'

seized, and the adherents of the past regime driven afar. Chouiski, on at least one occasion, received ambassadors, seated on the throne, with his spurred boots resting on the chest of young Ivan, prostrate before him. The unhappy princeling's childhood passed amid barbarian saturnalias. As the last of the house of Rurik fell, the Old Russia crumbled away.

The boy was forced to witness public executions, for which the Chouiskies had been judges and in which they actually took a hand with the sword or axe. In spite of his tears in fright, he saw Prince Belski cut to pieces in the council-chamber, and Woronzoff, another prince (hoyard), trampled to death. This daily sight of blood-spilling did not tend to making the observer humane. Indeed, he listened with precocity to hints that his thraldom might terminate with the overthrow of the tyrants, if he gave the word. But it was not until his fourteenth year that Ivan was able to consult with his uncles, the Glinskies. In a hunt they rushed out of ambush, and, encouraged by the prince, fell upon the Chouiskies, whom they threw to the dogs, who ate them up alive.

The enslavement was followed by utter freedom, perhaps as injurious. The new friends assured Ivan that all he saw was his : people, lands, houses , their wealth and lives. Courtiers are the same all the world over; it was the minister opening a window in Versailles Palace and telling the young Louis XV.

Celebtatet) Cttntes of tbe IRusstan Court

that all he saw was his property. Ivan was urged to reward without stint and spare nothing in punishment. On the complete destruction of the mind, they hoped to sustain their power. To torture men he was trained to torture animals. They pushed his hand to throw household pets from tower tops, and held the lance for him to prick bears and lions in their cages.

One day the young ruler was aroused by the shouts and alarm of a fire; fires in wooden towns were always a terror; he rose, and looked around for his usual companions. The Glinskies were not there. He ran to the window, whence he saw the town aflame — Moscow burning down for the tenth or twelfth time. On pikes borne by men, infuriated with hideous glee, and amid the torches which had ignited the oppressors* palaces, he recognized the severed heads of his uncles.

But in the midst of the clamour and the carnage, one fanatic thrust himself between the young prince and the mob. It was a second Peter the Hermit, who, like the Jewish prophets and the Moslem dervishes, did not shrink from attacking the king himself. This monk, Sylvester, stepping up to the throne, the Bible in his hand, and lifting his right to heaven, thundered that Heaven was wroth against cruel princes, and that their crimes kindled that wrath. At the same time his young and fair bride was brought in; young Ivan ran to her and promised, on her head, to repent and behave better. To this bold-speaking monk and

Iran, ''Ube UetdblC'

ameliorating wife joined a nobleman known for his piety and bravery.

For fourteen years, Russia blessed this triumvirate of Sylvester, Anastasia, and Adaschef. During this period, peace and order prevailed; the army was made regular and the militia-guard {Strelitz) created; a standing army of seven thousand Germans was formed; landlords were compelled to provide, for so much land, an armed soldier, or pay in cash.

Having an army. Prince Ivan sought to make use of it, though he was not a warrior.

In 1552, he attacked Kasan. It was the boundarymark where Asia began at that era. Kasan was a capital in the immense Mongolian empire; its khanate was in the fifteenth century strong enough to defy the Golden Order {Horde) ; its history was of conflict between the Tartars and Russians. Ivan crossed the Volga — the Russian river, as the Mississippi is the North American, and the Amazon the South American. His formidable army camped in the vast plain from the Volga to the sea. A monument is reared here to the Russians fallen in his assault of October in the same year. The engineers had demolished the citadel (kremlin) with gunpowder, and by the breach the Russians entered. The fighting went on from house to house, with the carnage engendered by opposition in race, creed, and manners.

So sure was Ivan that he would conquer that he had brought a portable wooden chapel, installed on

Celebrated Crimes ot tbe IRuBstan Court

the field of victory, and the prayers of thanksgiving were said in it. The tumulus, no doubt, occupies its site. The mosques were thrown down and the stones used for churches. And, as the foundation-stone of the Moslem temples was found to rest on a cross, the custom sprang up, in Russian ecclesiastical building, to set the foundation-stone of a church on a crescent. A town hereby retains the name of King's-town, as a hill known as the King's Mountain, from the victor dining on the summit to view his prize and the river, which from its sluggishness a witty traveller has styled, " A hesitation of water for five thousand miles ! " Within two years Ivan had made himself master of this region to the Caspian Sea, comprising the richest capital, Astrakan (Star of the Desert). He raised forts to repress the Tartars, and was saved from battling with the Turks by their army perishing in the desert between the Volga and the Ural Mountains. In his time, Siberia was added to his realm. Poland was likewise attached. The Russians caught a forecast of the prospect, — a great destiny, and might measure their forces doomed to be concentrated in a few hands; and to expand they organized despotism — that foe to healthy expansion.

Their chief was a typical leader. A large, robust frame ; a very full chest and broad shoulders ; shaggy hair and imposing beard ; eyes very bright and lively ; the features regular and under some control; the complexion rather fair than dark.

irvan, **Zbc ZcttMc'*

The rq)ublic and its capital, Novgorod, had a profound fame as a stronghold. A proverb ran, '' None can contend against Heaven or Novgorod the Great ! " It had submitted to his grandfather; Ivan imagined that it had revolted against him. He assailed and stormed the city without resistance, but, after slaying all in his advance, drove the rest into a vast staked enclosure, and thence, by cuttings in the ice, out upon the Volga, where famished bears, wolves, and dogs were let loose upon them. These creatures tore them to pieces, for the soldiers on the banks repulsed the fugitives. These massacres lasted a month, and when twenty thousand innocent wretches had perished, the conqueror (!) said seriously to his captains: "Pray for — me! "

Passing on to Tver, he overran it, and perpetrated the like crimes and madness; but, with the contradictoriness of a maniac, when he captured the petty republic of Pskof he spared the people and replaced the chief burghers in their offices.

Covered with cypress rather than palm and laurel, he marched toward Moscow, where a premonitory thrill saddened the people. They saw funeral-pyres set up among gibbets, and on these pyres large caldrons. Five hundred nobles, after being racked, were hung on these gallows-trees or boiled in the caldrons; others did not arrive at the execution, as the headsmen hacked them to pieces on the road.

The homicidal monsters of yore usually refrained from slaughter of women and children ; but the terrible Ivan overlooked none. Wives were hanged at their house doorways so that their husbands and sons had to brush by them, — and it was forbidden for the corpses to be cut down I Children were impaled on seats at table, so that the family had to take their meals with that gruesome parody of " the vacant chair." Not Phalaris, Nero, or Caligula invented such horrors.

Despite these blood-spots and shades, peace had its victories. The printing-press was introduced; the Emperor Charles V. was asked to provide a hundred artists and artisans of all kinds ; Archangel was established, that port-hole looking on the north, as St. Petersburg was, later, to be the window on the west; the privileges of the nobles were curtailed ; the clergy were checked in becoming landholders; paganistic practices disappeared, and a code was made of the confused laws.

In this brief Golden Age of Ivan, by his union with the Princess Sophia, daughter of Michael Paleologus, heiress to the Greek empire, whose uncle had died of grief at the Turks invading the Byzantine realm in 1453, — by this union, we repeat, Ivan might esteem himself heir to the same. In Ivan's foundationchurch, '* The Protection," in Moscow, is the armchair offered to him on this marriage by the ambassadors who came from Rome on this occasion. He thereupon changed the old Russian emblem of the

ITvart, **xrbe XTecriblC

Slavonian Knight for the Double-headed Eagle, as sovereign of Constantinople. This eagle looks two ways, to the east and to the west, foreseeing Russia bathed in the Black, the White, the Yellow, and — remoter still — the Red Seas. It was connected with Ivan that the word Tsar, or Czar, was employed; hitherto the Muscovites had been content with grand duke or grand prince {Valiki Kniass). Some authorities hold the word Czar to be a corruption of Caesar; others that it is the Babylonian and Ninevite final of osor, ezzar, asar, etc., to royal names, signifying the throne or authority. As Ivan became master of lands governed by the Tartars, and their chiefs had the title of Tsar, he simply took it over with the conquest, intimated Voltaire. However, Queen Elizabeth, who wished to keep friendly with the Russian potentate, since England had the sea-carriage fur trade, styled Ivan " emperor '' ; this was not confirmed until the European powers so recognized Peter the Great, a hundred and fifty years later. The present Russians use " Gospodar Imperator " where we use Czar.

At all events, whatever his title, Ivan assumed the luxury of the Caesars. Edward VI.'s ambassador tells of a six hours' banquet to a hundred guests, who ate off gold plate and were served by domestics who changed their attire, though magnificent, four times; another guest noticed three gold drinking-cups a foot wide, and counted thirty-eight silver dishes. It is true

Celebrated (Trimes ot tbe IRusBtan Court

that the cookery was, in harmony, " terrible," says a good judge.

The dark lining to this splendour was not slow to appear.

The Tartars, including Mongols, again threatened Moscow. Under Ivan it was considered " the Queen of Russian Cities." It was of astonishing extent, more like villages agglomerated than a city, and in the midst was the cathedral built by Ivan in token of his Kasan victory, very high, and having an enormous bell. The architect so pleased him with this masterpiece that he had his eyes put out so that he should not design a counterpart ! The barbarians had burnt former Moscows, and, this time, they came so near that a ford is pointed out as bearing their name. Ivan fled to shut himself up at Alexandrovski, where he turned monk, with three hundred of his myrmidons, who had to expiate deeds of bloodshed, too.

But his people would not let him shun them ; they dote on their tyrants, — nations do at times.

Without their dread prince, how could they defend themselves? Why did he flee? Did they frighten him? Had not the great lord a right of life and death over them? The state could not exist without the master! To say nothing of the realm, how about his abandoning religion, by which so many souls might yet be saved?

So he returned, like Charles V., out of the monastery, but in sombre sadness. To this melancholy mad-

lO ir\>an, *'Ubc XTertible ff man, all the foes of peace, welfare, and justice whispered evil. Was the death of his beloved Anastasia natural? The Czar had witnessed so many hastened deaths that he readily believed this slander. It was also asserted that the princes were ready to overthrow him. His ministers had beguiled him by witchcraft, they told him.

Forgetting the effect of his brief encloistering, he resumed the orgies and massacres surrounding his boyhood; he stabbed a noble who had struck his favourite; he saw another slain at the altar for venturing remonstrances ; he exiled the general who had taken Kasan; he tortured the Voyvode Scheremetoff, questioning him during the torture:

" What have you done with your treasure ? "

" By the hands of the poor, I gave it to Christ ! '* was the exasperating reply.

Thenceforth, his reign was that of the Terrible Czar. After the nobles, his own son; he slew Ivan with a stake, or, as some assert, sat him on the throne and killed him there; he sent another son into the dungeon; one of his victims, caught disguised as a monk, was placed on a keg of powder and Ivan had fire set to it, saying : " Cenobites are angels, and should fly in the air ! " He baked a prince in an oven, and had a treasurer and his four sons killed by the Chinese torture of "being hewn in a thousand pieces" ; he threw boiling water on his jester, and, when the sufferer could not laugh at the jest, stabbed him;

Celebrate^ Crimes ot tbe IRusstan Coutt

in short, by a death-strewn way he was approaching death.

His body had collapsed, says a chronicler who saw him ; "his head was bald ; his beard so scanty that it was a disfigurement ; his eyes were dead and sunken ; bestial ferocity deformed his features."

A comet appearing in 1584, the popular voice greeted it as signifying release from the tyranny of Ivan IV. He believed it himself, for he called magicians and astrologers to a house in Moscow provided for their arts, and forced them to name his death-day. He went out upon a platform of his favourite church, and humbly asked the prayers of the lowliest. He tried to trade with Heaven for good terms. But, happening to recover on the day designated as fatal, he said that the soothsayers had made a blunder, — that it was they who should die and not he! He felt so well that he sat to a game of chess ; when, playing a pawn against his partner, he stood up, but fell backwards, and died on his bed.

He had killed one son; he designated another to succeed him, and another was in the cradle. It was the Demetrius (Dmitri) whose murder led to the famous incident of " the False Demetrius.'' Ivan is remembered as " The Terrible." Perhaps an autocrat alone can justly judge an autocrat. In this case, hear what the Czar Nicholas wrote of him, at the age of fourteen : " Czar Ivan Vasiliewitch was severe and headstrong. Hence he was dubbed * The Terrible.'

Yet he was brave ( ?), just, and liberal in his rewards; above all, he contributed to his country's happiness and development." But he was also called " The Great " by his contemporaries, because he freed his country from the Tartar yoke; and a man is always great in posterity's eyes who drives out a foreign tyrant, as we repeat.

CHAPTER 11.

THE ROMANCE OF THE FALSE DEMETRIUS (1591)

The temptation of a kingdom is so tremendous that there is no realm without its Perkin Warbecks and Lambert Simnels, — that is, pretenders to the throne by natural claim. The " Prisoner of the Temple," for Russia, is the "Little Dmitri." The site of his terrible tragedy is Uglitch, a town built on an elbow of the Volga, where the shore slopes toward the plain whereon it is built. The time was 1591.

Czar Ivan the Terrible, in dying, left two sons, — Feodor and Demetrius; a third son, Ivan, he had killed in a mad outburst.

Feodor succeeded his father, and the title of heir apparent, the Czarowitch, passed gn to Demetrius (Dmitri), though the Greek Church only recognizes as lawful the children of one's first four marriages, and Ivan had married seven or eight times.

But, as the prince was weak and gentle, he was not presaged a long life, and troubles were feared unless the next comer, Demetrius, should be assured in his seat. Feodor's great pleasure, when he had scrupu-

Ubc IRomance of tbe ifalse Demetrius

lously said his prayers, was to read pious legends or to ring the bells with his own hands to summon the reverent to mass. " A sacristan," sneered his sire, " and not a sovereign ! "

As society was constituted then, and with such a disposition, so peculiar an empire as Russia could not be managed ; so Feodor, engrossed by his religious duties and recreations, let all the business of state be conducted by his brother-in-law, Boris Godunof.

By the dead hand, the town of Uglitch was assigned to Demetrius as appanage. Boris assigned to him, in his turn, to watch over him, — or, rather, " keep " him, — the Dowager Czarina, Maria Feodorowna, and the boy's three uncles.

In 1 59 1, young Demetrius, holding court at ten, had his little train of officers. They were spies for the regent. The three uncles were high livers, deep toss-pots, and fierce gamblers, always grasping out for money. Now, the paymaster was a tool of the regent; he resisted irregular payments, and, as he was sustained on appeals to high quarters by his master Boris, the three dependents inveighed against him, and, with their sister joining, inspired the young prince with hatred for the ruler. This enmity was heightened by the tale she was filled with ; it was said that the Czar's health was shattered by magic used by Tartars for Boris's gains; one of them, Michael, was an astrologer, and credited with torturing the sovereign by wounding and singeing a wax image,

Celebratet) Crimes of tbe IRusstan Court

like Feodor, according to recognized practices of the Black Art.

As for Demetrius, he was plainly Ivan the Terrible's child ; he delighted in animals fighting. He tormented them so that the sensitive Boris revolted. Finally, a great crime was imputed to him, akin to the wax images. One winter day, while he was playing outdoors with his pages, they made some snow-men. But they named them after the favourites of the regent, and on the biggest bestowed his name. Then, with coping-stones pulled off a crumbling wall, for snowballs were too soft, they stoned all the snow images, while the prince, armed with a wooden sword, sliced the head off the facsimile Godunof , saying :

" I shall do that really, when I am big enough ! " In midafternoon of the 15th of May, 1591, young Demetrius, whose mother had quitted him briefly, was playing with four boys, his pages and companions, in the palace yard, a vast enclosed place. His governess, his nurse, and a waiting-maid were also by. He had strewn some nuts on the ground and was amusing himself by stabbing them, with a knife. Suddenly, without the slightest outcry being heard, the nurse saw the boy writhing on the ground and bathed in his own blood. Running to him, she saw that his throat was cut and the artery spouting. He expired as she arrived, without gasping a word. At the nurse's shriek, out ran the Czarina, who caught up a stick and began to beat the governess violently with

Zbc IRomance ot tbe ffalse 2)emetrtus

It, accusing her of complicity with the murderers. Frantic with grief, she called her brothers, to show them the dead child, and threw all the responsibility for the deed upon the treasurer, Bitiagovski.

As usual, one of the three uncles, Michael Nagi, was drunk. He ordered the alarm-bell to be tolled. Believing it was for fire, everybody came at the run. The Czarina showed the dead prince, the governess swooned under the caning, and as Bitiagovski joined the spectators, accompanied by his son and gentlemen, she declared :

" There you see the assassins ! "

Bitiagovski tried to defend himself, alleging that the child had cut himself during an epileptic fit, to which he was subject; but to all his denials and plausible explanations the mother replied by the sentence of accusation, hate, and sorrow :

" Behold the murderer ! "

The treasurer saw that reasoning was useless, and that the twenty arms raised against him would not be lenient. He ran into the nearest doorway, one of a detached outbuilding, and barred them out; but the door was staved in, and, after just a short defence, he was killed under knives, clubs, and forks. His son was cut to pieces by his side.

The exasperation ran so high that one of the governess's serfs, who had tried to replace a cap snatched off her by one of the Nagis as a token of degradation, was killed and torn to pieces. The governess's son

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was slain under her eyes, as she returned to her senses. Some priests saved the daughters of the treasurer.

The tidings of this butchery reached Moscow, where the Czar Feodor declared that he would go down to Uglitch to inquire into it.

As he was leaving, Boris ordered a part of the city to be set fire; the alarm of "Moscow burns!" resounded in the king's ears, and he turned to see his chief city in flames. He wavered and turned inside the walls, as he might by his presence save his capital, but he could not save his brother, already dead. And Godunof undertook to manage the inquiry and punish the guilty. The inquest remains recorded and the papers in the original exist in the archives at Moscow ; but historians allege that no faith can be put in documents written under the pressure of a minister so mighty as Boris Godunof. In the statement, however, it appeared that the young Demetrius killed himself with the blade he was playing with. All the accusations lodged by the Czarina and her brothers against Bitiagovski and his children were the result of folly or hatred. This judgment was solemnly delivered. The Dowager Czarina, under the name of Marfa, was condemned to go into retirement in the St. Nicholas Nunnery, by Tcherepovetz ; her two brothers, Michael and Gregory, were exiled from the capital to a distance of five hundred miles; two hundred of the inhabitants of Uglitch, after all were styled rebels, were tortured to death, and a hundred others, their

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CZAR FEODOR.

Xlbe •Romance ot tbe jfalse Demetrius

tongues cut out, were flung into dungeons. Under the weight of terror, the population dispersed, and the thirty thousand souls dwindled down to eight. They were driven into Siberia, where they founded the town of Pelim.

The bell which knelled the alarm was tried, like all connected with the drama, its upshot more dreadful than the outset. It was doomed to constant exile; one of its ears was knocked off, it was knouted, and lost its natural rights — that is, it was forbidden to be rung again! In 1847, however, the Uglitchese petitioned to be allowed a bell, and, the mercy being granted, the news was transmitted to Siberia, where the exiles' descendants were informed of the restoration. The bell was found at Irkutsk, where there was great rejoicing; the bishop reconsecrated it, and the exiles proposed, after decorating it with flowers, to escort it back to its old perch. But they had not foreseen one thing, — where were the funds to come from for its thousand-league journey? When it was ciphered out that it would cost some ten or twelve thousand rubles, no one would proceed; and the bell remains, blessed but banished. But its employment was warranted, and it rings nowadays whenever a convict is liberated, a joy-bell if ever there was one.

Having recounted the historical facts resulting from the inquiry into the Demetrius fatality, let us tell the legend accompanying it; it is based on the axiom, *' To find the guilty, seek who profits by the deed.'*

(Telcbratet) Crimes of tbe 1Ru55tan Court

The only man who had an interest in young Demetrius dying was Godunof, — hence he is accused, and the voice of the people rose against him.

Since a long while the Czarina had suspected regicidal intentions, and watched her son. Nikon, the annalist, positively says that several baffled attempts to poison the Prince Demetrius were made. Seeing that poison did not work, Boris had recourse to the steel. Looking for assassins. Czar Feodor's page brought him a ready man; it was Bitiagovski, who, for lucre, agreed, with his son and nephew, to kill the heir apparent. But as three murderers were not enough to slay a boy, they added to their ranks the governess's son, Osip Volokho'f, and a gentleman named Tretiatikof. This band won over the governess to stand neutral, and one Vasilissa promised to draw the Czarina aside.

The boy was alone at the instant on the palace steps when the band was lurking. Volokhof went up to him, and, taking hold of his collar to loosen it and allow the steel to find its way, said:

" Is this a new collar your Highness is wearing? "

" Nay, it's an old one," replied the youth.

Scarcely had he uttered the words before he felt the wound, and raised a slight cry, as this wound was trivial. At this, the other bravoes ran up and finished him. The sexton was on the lookout, and ran up into the belfry, where he rang the bell.

The two stories tally so far. The reader is free

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to adopt one or the other, or accept the third, on which is established the claim of the false Demetrius. But, anyway, the popular voice accusesi Boris of complicity.

Some time after this tragedy Czarina Irene gave birth to a girl. The law conceding the succession to females was not existent. Boris was accused of having put away a boy, really born, and substituted a girl; then, as she did not live, he was held to have had her poisoned.

In 1588, Feodor dying, or, more truly, dying off, — a death long foreseen, — Boris was inevitably designated as the murderer. Something like the terrible Macbeth legend lies in this fatality pursuing the remnants of the house of Rurik, and in Boris's progress to the throne. He assembled three magicians and consulted them.

" Thou shalt reign," said one.

" Good ! " said the consulter, at the height of gladness.

" But for seven years only," went on the soothsayers.

" What matters the duration ! Seven days will suffice so long as I reign! " retorted Boris.

In the Red Church, built a hundred years after the tragedy, is preserved the silver tomb in which were placed the young prince's remains. On a brass platter, in a shallow vessel, is some earth, said to be blooddyed when the yictini fell ; at each corner held by clasps is a nut, the four being from among those he was playing with when stabbed. The question arises why the veneration for such rehcs, and what interest the usurper Boris had in making the death so visible to all eyes? The policy was clear; his act assumed the mask of piety. He wanted the death of the heir to be public and assured, as it cleared his way to the throne. His genius may have foreseen the false Demetrius, and he wished to shut out all chance of profiting by public credulity. But he had not gone far enough that way.