Ivan the Terrible

‘An eagle, many-winged, with lion’s claws, has fallen upon me. He has robbed me of three Cedars of Lebanon : my beauty, my wealth, my children. Our country is deserted, our city is in ruins, our markets are destroyed. My brothers have been carried to a place where neither our fathers, nor our grand­fathers, nor our forefathers have dwelt. . . .’ 

Thus, by the mouth of one of her chroniclers, did Pskov, a free and republican town, absorbed, in the year 1510, into the new Muscovite Empire, lament her lost independence, her broken privileges, and her exiled sons. The father of Ivan the Terrible, Vassili Ivanovitch, had just passed by, had carried off the great bell which for centuries had called the townsmen to the viétchié—the popular meetings of the place—deported hundreds of families—quickly replaced by Muscovite immigrants—to the interior of his territories, and proclaimed the incorporation of the Republic with his State. 

And this, in a then unknown corner of the European world, was the repetition, at short notice, of a chapter of European history. Thus, at Liège, in 1467, Charles the Bold had overthrown the famous perron, the ancient bronze column, at the foot of which, for centuries past, the people had been wont to make its laws and accomplish all the acts of its public life. Thus, too, at the same time, and hard by, Louis XL, striving with his vassals of Burgundy, Brittany, and Guyenne, was labouring to ‘réunir les fleurons ‘of the crown of France...