nt himself with a
ransom and the acknowledgment of his suzerainty; but into the act of
submission of the republic he smuggled some ambiguous words which made
him its supreme judge and legislator. Then he fomented the dissensions
between the patricians and plebeians raging as well in Novgorod as at
Florence. Of some complaints of the plebeians he took occasion to
introduce himself again into the city, to have its nobles, whom he knew
to be hostile to himself, sent to Moscow loaded with chains, and to
break the ancient law of the republic that "none of its citizens should
ever be tried or punished out of the limits of its own territory." From
that moment he became supreme arbiter. "Never," say the annalists,
"never since Rurik had such an event happened; never had the grand
princes of Kiev and Vladimir seen the Novgorodians come and submit to
them as their judges. Ivan alone could reduce Novgorod to that degree of
humiliation." Seven years were employed by Ivan to corrupt the republic
by the exercise of his judicial authority. Then, when he found its
strength worn out, he thought the moment ripe for declaring himself. To
doff his own mask of moderation, he wanted, on the part of Novgorod, a
breach of the peace. As he had simulated calm endurance, so he
simulated now a sudden burst of passion. Having bribed an envoy of the
republic to address him during a public audience with the name of
sovereign, he claimed, at once, all the rights of a despot--the
self-annihilation of the republic.

CHAPTER VI

One feature characteristic of the Slavonic race must strike every
observer. Almost everywhere it confined itself to an inland country,
leaving the sea-borders to non-Slavonic tribes. Finno-Tartaric tribes
held the shores of the Black Sea, Lithuanians and Fins those of the
Baltic and White Sea. Wherever they touched the sea-board, as in the
Adriatic and part of the Baltic, the Slavonians had soon to submit to
foreign rule. The Russian people shared this common fate of the
Slavonian race. Their home, at the time they first appear in history,
was the country about the sources and upper course of the Volga and its
tributaries, the Dnieper, Don, and Northern Dwina. Nowhere did their
territory touch the sea except at the extremity of the Gulf of Finland.
Nor had they before Peter the Great proved able to conquer any maritime
outlet beside that of the White Sea, which, during three-fourths of the
year, is itself enchained and