remains unknown. A lawyer, named Beda, who conveyed the news of
his death to Moscow, was elevated to the rank of secretary by the
grand prince, who exhibited on that occasion an indiscreet joy." On
the 14th of March, 1462, Vassali terminated his eventful and
tumultuous life, at the age of forty-seven. His reign was during one
of the darkest periods in the Russian annals. Life to him, and to his
cotemporaries, was but a pitiless tempest, through which hardly one
ray of sunshine penetrated. It was under his reign that the horrible
punishment of the _knout_ was introduced into Moscow, a barbaric mode
of scourging unknown to the ancient Russians. Fire-arms were also
beginning to be introduced, which weapons have diminished rather than
increased the carnage of fields of battle.

CHAPTER X.

THE ILLUSTRIOUS IVAN III.

From 1462 to 1480.

Ivan III.--His Precocity and Rising Power.--The Three Great
Hordes.--Russian Expedition Against Kezan.--Defeat of the
Tartars.--Capture of Constantinople by the Turks.--The Princess
Sophia.--Her Journey to Russia, and Marriage with Ivan
III.--Increasing Renown of Russia.--New Difficulty with the
Horde.--The Tartars Invade Russia.--Strife on the Banks of the
Oka.--Letter of the Metropolitan Bishop.--Unprecedented
Panic.--Liberation of Russia.

In the middle of the fifteenth century, Constantinople was to Russia
what Paris, in the reign of Louis XIV., was to modern Europe. The
imperial city of Constantine was the central point of ecclesiastical
magnificence, of courtly splendor, of taste, of all intellectual
culture.[4] To the Greeks the Russians were indebted for their
religion, their civilization and their social culture.

[Footnote 4: Karamsin, vol. ix., p. 436.]

Ivan III., who had for some time been associated with his father in
the government, was now recognized as the undisputed prince of the
grand principality, though his sway over the other provinces of Russia
was very feeble, and very obscurely defined. At twelve years of age,
Ivan was married to Maria, a princess of Tver. At eighteen years of
age he was the father of a son, to whom he gave his own name. When he
had attained the age of twenty-two years, his father died, and the
reins of government passed entirely into his hands. From his earliest
years, he gave indications of a character of much more than ordinary
judgment and maturity. Upon his accession to the throne, he not only
declined making any appeal to th