all the way
back to the city of Azof, cannonading them with the artillery and the
ammunition they had wrested from their foes. Here the Turks attempted
to make a final stand, but a chance shot from one of the guns
penetrated the immense powder magazine, and an explosion so terrific
ensued that two thirds of the city were entirely demolished.

The Turks, in consternation, now made a rush for their ships. But
Zerebrinow, with coolness and sagacity which no horrors could disturb,
had already planted his batteries to sweep them with a storm of
bullets and balls. The cannonade was instantly commenced. The missiles
of death fell like hail stones into the crowded boats and upon the
crowded decks. Many of the ships were sunk, others disabled, and but a
few, torn and riddled, succeeded in escaping to sea, where the most of
them also perished beneath the waves of the stormy Euxine. Such was
the utter desolation of this one brief war tempest which lasted but a
few weeks.

Queen Elizabeth, anxious to maintain friendly relations with an empire
so vast, and opening before her subjects such a field of profitable
commerce, having been informed of the conspiracy against Ivan IV., of
his abdication, and of his resumption of the crown, sent to him an
embassador with expressions of her kindest wishes, and assured him
that should he ever be reduced to the disagreeable necessity of
leaving his empire, he would find a safe retreat in England, where he
would be received and provided for in a manner suitable to his
dignity, where he could enjoy the free exercise of his religion and be
permitted to depart whenever he should wish.

The tolerant spirit manifested by Ivan IV. towards the Lutherans,
continued to disturb the ecclesiastics; and the clergy and nobles of
the province of Novgorod, headed by the archbishop, formed a plot of
dissevering Novgorod from the empire, and attaching it to the kingdom
of Poland. This conspiracy assumed a very formidable attitude, and one
of the brothers of the tzar was involved in it. Ivan immediately sent
an army of fifteen thousand men to quell the revolt. We have no
account of this transaction but from the pens of those who were
envenomed by their animosity to the religious toleration of Ivan. We
must consequently receive their narratives with some allowance.

The army, according to their account, ravaged the whole province; took
the city by storm; and cut down in indiscriminate slaughter
twenty-five thous