Ivan the Terrible by Isabel de Madariaga

Author:Isabel de Madariaga [Madariaga, Isabel de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Eurasian History, Geopolitics, European History, Renaissance History, Political Science, Amazon.com, Retail, Russia, Biography
ISBN: 9780300097573
Publisher: Yale University Press

But Viskovaty and Funikov were not the only targets.48 The heads of many other prikazy such as the prikaz of landed estates (Pomest'nyi), the principal office of revenue (Bol'shoi Prikaz), the office against brigands (Razboinyi Prikaz) were all rounded up.49 When, where and how the victims were arrested and tortured and where they were kept is not known.

Behind Ivan's savagery there lay a determined push by the members of the oprichnina, both aristocrats and service gentry, to eliminate the old princely families, leading boyar families and the leading d'iaki, in charge of the government offices and of the administration of the zemshchina. There was also a secret vendetta against some of Ivan's original servants in the oprichnina, such as Prince A.D. Viazemsky, and the Basmanovs.

The final scene was dramatically enacted on 25 July 1570: ‘on the feast day of St James the Apostle’ Ivan's executioners prepared the public square, the Poganaia meadow, with twenty huge stakes driven into the ground, joined by transverse beams, and supplied with cauldrons of cold and boiling water. The Tsar then appeared, on horseback, dressed all in black, fully armed, and carrying a bow and arrows and an axe, and escorted by 1,500 mounted strel'tsy (musketeers). Schlichting, who was an eyewitness (as were the Livonian nobles Kruse and Taube), describes how some three hundred nobles, in various stages of disintegration, prostration and decrepitude, crawling on their broken legs, were brought before Ivan and his sixteen-year-old son, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich. ‘Seeing the people were frightened and unwilling to behold a scene of such dreadful cruelty’, wrote Schlichting,

Ivan rode about on his horse telling them not to be afraid, and ordering them to draw near to witness the spectacle. He admitted that he had originally intended to destroy all the inhabitants of the city but declared that he had now laid aside his anger. Whereupon the people came close to the Prince, who asked whether it was right for him to punish those who had betrayed him? The people shouted ‘long live our glorious Tsar’ and expressed their approval. The Tsar now had one hundred and eighty-four of the three hundred brought forward and gave them into the custody of nobles who were standing by, saying: ‘Here you can have them. I make you a present of them … I have no further quarrel with them.’50

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