ence, it would not be easy to
decide the cause of this strange and abrupt proceeding; but it was
evident that the soldiery were resolved not to return home without
spoils. They rushed onward to the city; and even the general, who was
instructed by Ivan to countermand the attack, in vain attempted to
restrain them. With a leader of their own choosing, they fell upon Kazan,
and utterly routed the inhabitants. The Grand Prince, perceiving that
the enemy was powerless, now no longer hesitated; but, engaging all the
princes in his service, and throwing his own guards into the ranks, he
despatched his colossal forces to reduce the already dismembered hold of
the Tartars of Kazan. The event was a complete victory, but Ivan remained
safe at Moscow, to watch the issue of an undertaking which he could not
reasonably have feared.

The subjugation of Kazan left the field clear for his designs upon the
three domestic republics. Vyatka, insolent in its own strength, declared
itself neutral between Moscow and Kazan; and on the fall of the latter
city, Novgorod, apprehensive that Ivan would turn his arms immediately
against her, called upon the people of Pskof for aid, expressing her
determination to march at once against the Grand Prince, in order to
anticipate and avert his intentions. The Novgorodians were the more
determined upon this bold measure by the personal pusillanimity which
Ivan betrayed in a war where the advantages lay entirely at his own side.
They calculated upon the terror they should inspire; and judged that if
they could not succeed in vanquishing the Grand Prince, they should, at
all events, be enabled to secure their own terms. Marpha, a rich and
influential woman, the widow of a _posadnik_, and who was enamoured of a
Lithuanian chief, conceiving the romantic design of bestowing her country
as a marriage dower upon her lover, exerted all her power to kindle the
enthusiasm and assist the project of the citizens. Her hospitality was
unbounded. She threw open her palace to the people; lavished her wealth
among them in sumptuous entertainments and exhibitions, and caused the
_vetchooi kolokol_ ("assembling-bell"), which summoned the popular
meetings to the market-place, to be rung as the signal of these orgies of
licentiousness. The great bell in Novgorod was the type of the republican
independence of the citizens, and represented the excesses into which
they were not unwilling to plunge whenever it was necessary to te