l as in the crater of a volcano, and
in six hours the city was in ashes. Thousands perished in the flames.
The fire, communicating with a powder magazine, produced an explosion
which uphove the buildings like an earthquake, and prostrated more
than a third of a mile of the city walls. According to the most
reliable testimony, there perished in Moscow, by fire and sword, from
this one raid of the Tartars, more than one hundred and fifty thousand
of its inhabitants.

The Tartars, tottering beneath the burden of their spoil, and dragging
after them many thousand prisoners of distinction, slowly, proudly,
defiantly retired. With barbaric genius they sent to the tzar a naked
cimiter, accompanied by the following message:

"This is a token left to your majesty by an enemy, whose revenge is
still unsatiated, and who will soon return again to complete the work
which he has but just begun."

Such is war. It is but a succession of miseries. A hundred and fifty
thousand Tartars perished but a few months before in the waves of the
Euxine. Now, a hundred and fifty thousand Russians perish, in their
turn, amidst the flames of Moscow. When we contemplate the wars which
have incessantly ravaged this globe, the history of man seems to be
but the record of the strifes of demons, with occasional gleams of
angel magnanimity.

After the retreat of the Tartars, Ivan IV. convened a council of war,
punished with death those officers who had fled before the enemy as he
himself had done; and, rendered pliant by accumulated misfortune, he
presented such overtures to the King of Poland as to obtain the
promise of a truce for three years. Soon after this, Sigismond, King
of Poland, died. The crown was elective, and the nobles, who met to
choose a new monarch, by a considerable majority invited Maximilian
II., Emperor of Germany, to assume the scepter. They assigned as a
reason for this choice, which surprised Europe, the religious
liberality of the emperor, who, as they justly remarked, had
conciliated the contending factions of the Christian world, and had
acquired more glory by his pacific policy than other princes had
acquired in the exploits of war.

A minority of the nobles were displeased with this choice, and
refusing to accede to the vote of the majority, proceeded to another
election, and chose Stephen Bathori, a warrior chief of Transylvania,
as their sovereign.[9] The two parties now rallied around their rival
candidates and prepa