ivonians. These he
failed to conquer, but held their resistance as a rebellion, and ordered
his prisoners to be thrown into boiling caldrons, spitted on lances, or
roasted at fires which he stirred up with his own hands.

This monster of iniquity married in all seven wives. He sought for an
eighth from the court of Queen Elizabeth of England, and the daughter of
the Earl of Huntington was offered him as a victim,--a willing one, it
seems, influenced by the glamour which power exerts over the mind; but
before the match was concluded the intended bride took fright, and
begged to be spared the terrible honor of wedding the Russian czar.

Yet all the excesses of Ivan did not turn the people against him. He
assumed the manner of one inspired, claiming divine powers, and all the
injuries and degradation which he inflicted upon the people were
accepted not only with resignation but with adoration. The Russians of
that age of ignorance seem to have looked upon God and the czar as one,
and submitted to blows, wounds, and insults with a blind servility to
which only abject superstition could have led.

[Illustration: CHURCH AND TOWER OF IVAN THE GREAT.]

The end came at last, in a final freak of madness. An humble
supplication, coming from the most faithful of his subjects, was made to
him; but in his distorted brain it indicated a new conspiracy of the
boyars, of which his eldest and ablest son was to be the leader. In a
transport of insane rage the frenzied emperor raised his iron-bound
staff and struck to the earth with a mortal blow this hope of his race.

This was his last excess. Regret for his hasty act, though not remorse
for his murders, assailed him, and he soon after died, after twenty-six
years of insane cruelties, ordering new executions almost with his
latest breath.

_THE CONQUEST OF SIBERIA._

In the year 1558 a family of wealthy merchants, Stroganof by name, began
to barter with the Tartar tribes dwelling east of the Ural Mountains.
Ivan IV. had granted to this family the desert districts of the Kama,
with great privileges in trade, and the power to levy troops and build
forts--at their own expense--as a security against the robbers who
crossed the Urals to prey upon their settled neighbors to the west. In
return the Stroganofs were privileged to follow their example in a more
legal manner, by the brigandage of trade between civilization and
barbarism.

These robbers came from the region now know