The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends - Максим Горький


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in unison with the other birds of prey that hover round the doomed one. For the present, it is worthy of remark that the first political result of the religious schism which was to plunge the greater part of Europe, and especially the Empire, into a paroxysm of strife, was the closing of a long and bitter quarrel in the Baltic lands. As regards the immediate effect of the disappearance of the Order from Prussia, Moskva was chiefly concerned in the isolation which that event entailed upon the Teutonic colony in Livland and Estland. In return for the valuable help von Plettenberg had afforded the Grand-Master during the war, the latter had already granted him complete independence from the control of the Prussian executive; hence, when the secular revolution was effected, the knights of Livland retained their organisation and temporal possessions.127

      The remainder of the reign of Vasili presented no important features beyond a recurrence of inconclusive hostilities with the Krim Tartars, and occasional diplomatic intercourse with Constantinople. While yet, comparatively speaking, in the prime of life, Vasili was attacked with a leech-baffling malady, which declared itself when he was on his way to the autumn hunting at Voloko Lamsk. 1533For reasons of state it was desirable that the sovereign’s critical condition should be kept from the knowledge of the general public, and especially from the foreign ambassadors. Therefore the suffering monarch was sledge-borne in a painful journey to Moskva, at a season when the falling snow and young ice rendered travelling laborious and unsafe. With the exception of his brothers, Urii and Andrei, Mikhail Glinski—restored to liberty and princely favour—and a few boyarins, none were admitted to the Grand Prince’s presence, but the rumour of his mortal sickness soon spread. The dying man played to the end his cold impassive game of statecraft, and his last hours were employed in arranging safeguards and regulations for the government during the minority of his successor. As the third day of December drew to a wintry close the crowds gathered in the streets and stood round the silent palace, and that night no one slept in Moskva. Dark-robed ecclesiastics emerged from their retreats and swarmed into the house of death like vultures swooping upon a dying beast. And as the huddled crowds watched and waited without, a curious scene was being enacted in the grim bed-chamber. With notable exceptions, it had been the custom for Russian Grand Princes to receive on their deathbed the tonsure, monastical habit, and a new name; this custom the Metropolitan wished to adhere to in the case of Vasili, while Prince Andrei and another layman desired that he should die, as he had lived, a sovereign and not a monk. At midnight, while prince and boyarin were endeavouring to snatch the black neophyte’s robe from the Vladuika, and while the latter solemnly and vehemently cursed them “in this world and the next,” Vasili Ivanovitch drew his last breath. It was the first time in the course of his career that he had shown any impatience. Hastily they thrust the all-important garment on the corpse, and called it Varlam; but the baptismal name had a clear minute’s start. The great bell of Moskva boomed out to the watching multitudes the news that their sovereign was dead. A new day dawned, and another reign had begun.


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