y in his empire. Its trade was enormous with the
East and the West. It had joined the Hanseatic League, and its wealth
was largely due to the German merchants who had flocked there. With
singular lack of wisdom, the Tsar had confiscated the property of these
men, and now the ruin of the city was complete.

While Germany, and Poland, and Sweden,--resolved to shut up Russia in
her barbaric isolation,--were locking the front door on the Baltic and
the Gulf, England had found a side door by which to enter. With great
satisfaction Ivan saw English traders coming in by way of the White
Sea, and he extended the rough hand of his friendship to Queen
Elizabeth, who made with him a commercial treaty, which was
countersigned by Francis Bacon. Then, as his friendship warmed, he
proposed that they should sign a reciprocal engagement to furnish each
other with an asylum in the event of the rebellion of their subjects.
Elizabeth declined the asylum he kindly offered her, "finding, by the
grace of God, no dangers of the sort in her kingdom." Then he did her
the honor to offer an alliance of a different kind. He proposed that
she should send him her cousin Lady Mary Hastings to take the place
left vacant by his eighth wife--to become his Tsaritsa. The
proposition was considered, but when the English maiden heard about his
brutalities and about his seven wives, so terrified was she that she
refused to leave England, and the affair had to be abandoned.
Elizabeth's rejection of his proposals, and also of his plan for an
alliance offensive and defensive against Poland and Sweden, so
infuriated Ivan that he confiscated the goods of the English merchants,
and this friendship was temporarily ruptured. But amicable relations
were soon restored between Elizabeth and her barbarian admirer. If she
had heard of his awful vengeance in 1571, she had also heard of the
massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris in 1572!

Russia had now opened diplomatic relations with the Western kingdoms.
The foreign ambassadors were received with great pomp in a sumptuous
hall hung with tapestries and blazing with gold and silver. The Tsar,
with crown and scepter, sat upon his throne, supported by the roaring
lions, and carefully studied the new ambassador as he suavely asked him
about his master. A police inspector from that moment never lost sight
of him, making sure that he obtained no interviews with the natives nor
information about the state of the count